You should have read that more thoroughly. You don't have to pay anything to access the content. Instead you are offered with a donation option that can further enhance the content quality.

I don't think anyone ever paid their rent from their TipJar.

If you have a specific project, you can crowdfund to get the necessary economy-of-scale to make it work. But just TipJar that sits there is afaik pretty much insignificant.

So while it sounds nice, the economics ostensibly don't work:


Perhaps you will argue that tips will be greater if people have an easier and more instant way to tip.

Let's say I have 10,000 readers per month at my blog, and 5% of them tip me on average 50 cents. That is $250 per month. That won't even pay rent. And 5% is I think fairly high conversion rate.

Also I think people get tired of tipping. It sounds nice and everyone is motivated at the start, but over time they will grow weary of the cognitive load of, "who do I tip this month?". They have to organize all their web activity and analyze it. The cognitive load is the real killer.