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Gittip stats
- citricsquid 14y agoThe stats page should have permalinks for each week so that if someone clicks on this HN submission in 1 month they can see the intended stats, not the latest.
- whit537 14y agoAgreed. Just in case, here are some quick numbers so far, for the record: Week 1: $24.80 / 12 people Week 2: $4.24 / 7 * Week 3: $30.08 / 19 Week 4: $110.64 / 44 Week 5: $379.56 / 71 Week 6: $615.66 / 98 Week 7: $600.99 / 110 As you can see, we slowed this past week, to be honest. Looking for advice on getting back to ~doubling each week. :-) * In week 2 our payment processor died. We were expecting $55 / 26. See also: http://blog.gittip.com/post/25565694263/how-not-to-get-acquired http://blog.gittip.com/post/25565694263/how-not-to-get-acqui...
- cemerick 14y agoAs you can see, we slowed this past week, to be honest. Looking for advice on getting back to ~doubling each week. :-) I'm afraid you're probably going to be looking at a plateau until you can get the payments thing straightened out permanently so that recipients can depend on getting an ACH every Friday (or Monday, whatever). Closing that loop will instantly motivate every open source hacker to put a "Help fund my work @ Gittip" button everywhere. Bummer the BalancedPayments option didn't pan out.
- shawnee_ 14y agoBummer the BalancedPayments option didn't pan out. It's panning out; we're in the process of helping him with the integration. Also, the "once a week" payout period is unique to Gittip's model (maybe because Stripe requires a 7-day wait?). With Balanced, a marketplace can pay out as frequently as it's earning: even daily. So that's an option Gittip can consider in the future.
- cemerick 14y agoAh, sorry; last I saw, he was heading towards Braintree with a a 6-month horizon for the various merchant account approvals, etc. I hope the current path works out. :-)
- whit537 14y agoYes, new cards are going into Balanced as of this morning. Hoping to implement payouts for people in the US in the next week or two: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/22 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/22
- samstave 14y agoIsn't this what wepay.com was supposed to solve?
- whit537 14y agoI called WePay and talked to a sales rep. The "API side" was busy so he said they'd get back to me, but I never heard from them: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/69 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/69 By contrast, Balanced stepped forward and contributed the bulk of the integration with their service: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/pull/137 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/pull/137 To be honest their product isn't as tight as Stripe (had to work around a few library bugs and deployment hiccups), but they have been super open and supportive and respectful of Gittip as a community.
- samstave 14y agoYou're comment should be required reading for HNers. SUPPORT is critical even over "coolness and hype" The fact that these other solutions MAY be better - your experience is with Balanced is going to be what sets them apart and gives them your business. I'd be willing to bet that the Balanced folks have experience working as contractors. Contractor work is founded on features and capabilities, but their work is kept alive and well through the relationship and support they give their customers. This is the failing of many "rock star" developers - you may have an incredible resume, but if you're an asshole who would want to work with you.
- whit537 14y agoFor the record, I did receive an email from WePay in response to this comment: "I realize that there's nothing to be done now, but wanted you to know that we do take customer service seriously and apologize for the lack of follow up."
- debacle 14y agoThis is good to hear. I'm cautiously optimistic about this project and hope we see numbers grow a few orders of magnitude in the coming year.
- whit537 14y ago:-)
- md224 14y agoAs the creator of FuckItJS, I have unfortunately fallen short of my "$1,000,000.00 per week" goal
- whit537 14y agoA little love, people! :-) https://www.gittip.com/mattdiamond/ https://www.gittip.com/mattdiamond/
- ricardobeat 14y agoThose 319 people (74%) are contributing only $79/month. If minimum contribution was raised to US$1 it would generate more donations even if >60% leave.
- chrismdp 14y agoI'm kind in agreement about this. $0.25 a week really is tiny.
- whit537 14y agoHmmm ... for the record, here's the thinking that led to the current tip structure: http://blog.gittip.com/post/26505682007/is-personal-funding-viable http://blog.gittip.com/post/26505682007/is-personal-funding-...
- cemerick 14y agoFWIW, I'd love to see a $1.00 option added to the mix. 25¢ is too small, $3 is too much, $1 is just right. :-)
- mythz 14y agoAgreed, 25c is too small, min should be $1. Also I think the sweet spot is between $1-6, IMO there should be multiple options in the middle here.
- ricardobeat 14y agoYeah, the current pricing jumps from $1 to $12 a month, $1 to $4 is $4-$24, quite a gap. Honestly, I'd also prefer monthly contributions, thinking in week increments is an american thing. Credit card statements and salaries come in monthly for most of the world, I think.
- wildmXranat 14y agoSigned up for fun! I still don't see the tip buttons once I show a widget to a viewer.
- gbrindisi 14y agoDo you support organizations?
- veyron 14y agoWhat exactly are the economics of sub-dollar charges? I'd imagine the CC charges exceed donation amount
- kapilkale 14y agoProcessing fees are usually around $0.30 per charge + 3% of the amount charged.
- dangrossman 14y agoIf they took PayPal (which works for both sides of the system using Mass Payments to pay all the recipients), they'd be able to opt for 5% + $0.05 with the micropayments service. On a $1 tip, it's the difference between $0.33 and $0.10 in fees.
- whit537 14y agoLooked into this, forget why it didn't make sense. Reticketed: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/186 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/186
- a-priori 14y agoGittip charges fees of $0.30 + 3.9%. They say that they use Balanced Payments, which charges $0.30 + 2.9%, so Gittip is taking a 1% commission on all money that enters the system. For the sub-dollar charges, keep in mind that the fees are levied for the sum of your tips (assuming no one tips you). So if you only tip one person $0.25 then it's highly inefficient, mostly a 'tip' for the credit card companies. At 1x$0.25 tips, this structure has an effective overhead of 124.9%; at 10 tips its overhead is 15.9%; at 100 tips, it's 5.1%; and at 1000 tips it's 4.0%.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoOne solution would be for Gittip to implement something like an account balance. Say I charge my Gittip Wallet with $25 seed money. My CC gets charged $25 + $.30 + 3.9% ($26.07). I set up $1.75/week of tips to various people. My Gittip Wallet gets dinged $1.75 per week for 14 weeks ($24.50). On week 15 when it comes time to give my $1.75, my Gittip Wallet is too low. So it gets another $25 bump (my CC gets hit with another $26.07) and we're good to go for a bit. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Make the auto-bump amount a user selection in case someone is gifting $30 a week, they could auto-bump at say $100 a pop. Edit: Also, if I understand correctly, if I am getting tips, that would also go into the same wallet. So in theory the tips I receive would extend the amount of time between auto-bumps. Or not at all if I'm getting more than I am giving.
- Killswitch 14y agoAwesome, I signed up, but how do I change my username? I don't want to use the one supplied to me by logging in via Github.
- whit537 14y agoNot supported atm, sorry. :-( Ticketed: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/181 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/181
- Killswitch 14y agoChop chop! :P I'll keep an eye out. Thanks.
- guscost 14y agoI suspect I'm not alone in saying this: If someone paid me, I'd be able to contribute a lot more to open source projects. As it stands, I am inclined to worry that sharing my source code will undermine my ability to make money while writing it, and this might not be an ideal situation.
- reginaldo 14y agoI know a guy working on a related idea. Instead of funding people, his system works by funding issues. The link is http://www.freedomsponsors.org http://www.freedomsponsors.org The workflow, as I understand it, goes something like that: 1) There's an issue on a project you use that's getting no love. 2) You go to freedomsponsors register that you'd like some issue solved, so much that you'd be willing to put your money where your mouth is. Also, you'll probably want to put a link to freedomsponsors on the project's issue tracker. 3) When one or more people solve the issue, the sponsor pays them (if more than one person has worked on the issue, the sponsor can distribute the money in anyways).
- esbwhat 14y agoso basically sort of a reverse kickstarter for open source. That's brilliant. I love it. I would sponsor someone fixing moving selections in gimp. I cannot figure out how to do it. There has to be a more intuitive method.
- reginaldo 14y agoI'll tell him to put a giant Sponsor button on every screen. First you'll have to click the tiny "Login with google" button in the upper right corner, then the "Sponsor new issue" button. Then you paste the link to the original issue. After that, the site will guide you a little bit better.
- suyash 14y agoThanks for this tool, I prefer this over Paypal donation! (thanks for all the tips in advance :) https://www.gittip.com/suyashjoshi/ https://www.gittip.com/suyashjoshi/
- thaumaturgy 14y agoThis is going to sound pretty lame, but I've been suffering from a severe case of Signup Fatigue recently. My business has been doing pretty well so I'd be OK with committing to a weekly debit to my business card, but I don't have a GitHub account and Signup Fatigue is preventing me from setting one up just to give money to people. Am I being excessively whiny? Are there any plans to not require a GitHub account to give people a little money? Really neat effort, I hope it continues to take off.
- ch0wn 14y agoThe whole site is about giving money to people on Github. I'd usually agree that enforcing a certain other secondary login to sign up can be a bad thing, but for a product so tightly coupled with another service like this, I think it's okay. At least for the start.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago> The whole site is about giving money to people on Github Yes. But I think the parent comment is saying that also requires that the money is given BY people on GitHub. Scenario: I don't have a GitHub account because I work for someone that is not doing open source work. However, my own work greatly benefits from a project I found on GitHub (a PhoneGap Library, a Python script, etc). I would like to tip the people responsible for those projects. Solution: ???????
- ricardobeat 14y agoSolution: create an account at GitHub, it would have taken less time than writing this comment ;)
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoSo artificially inflate "usage" on someone else's system? That doesn't sound very nice to do to GitHub.
- runako 14y agoFirst: I really like the idea of Gittip.com. Congratulations on getting this far. But I strongly object to the tip amounts. Without going into too much detail, $0.25/week is not something I'd really consider a tip for a barista making my coffee, my dry cleaner, or any of the other myriad service folks I interact with on a regular basis. $0.25 will get you about 10 minutes of on-street parking in many cities; it might take longer to get your coffee. I'd guess that my attorney, physician, or my lawn guy would not consider $0.25/week a genuine "thank you" gesture as much as "hey, I have this quarter in my pocket." Personally, I think programmers are worth a lot more than most programmers think they themselves are worth. Every other day, there's a HN post about some clueless business guy looking for technical co-founders. The HN community rages about how business people always undervalue their technical contributions. And then here's a project where programmers will tell you that a good project is worth $0.25/week. It that's true, maybe the "clueless" business guys are right to devalue technical work. So while I really like your idea, I really do wish you'd reconsider the worth of programmers who contribute to these projects. I'm trying to be as constructive as possible here, because I think good things can come from what you're doing if you don't advance the notion that good programming in any meaningful quantity is worth $0.25.
- whit537 14y agoThanks. :-) Note that we already raised the rates significantly (max used to be $1.28 instead of $24), and I'm personally looking for $2,000 per week. So I don't think Gittip understates the value of good programmers. Here's the thinking behind the current tip amounts: http://blog.gittip.com/post/26505682007/is-personal-funding-viable http://blog.gittip.com/post/26505682007/is-personal-funding-... See the comment below about raising the minimum to $1, which has been ticketed here: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180
- runako 14y agoI should add that I did read that before posting. And that's part of my point: you seem to have developed the tip amount framework without any regard to the larger market. My point is that the fact that many people gladly tip their bartenders > $1/week is relevant to your project. In the real world, $0.25 is not a tip, it's pocket change. (Here's a list of suggested tips, note the conspicuous lack of tips under a dollar: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/10/12/basic-tips-on-tipping-how-much-and-to-whom/ http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/10/12/basic-tips-on-t...) The other gripe I have is that you match expected tips for a "top open-source programmer" with an average salary for a "mid-career engineer". Why shouldn't a top open-source programmer be able to make top engineer money (read: a lot more that $160k) with Gittip? And why is there a max tip amount? What if my business wants to "tip" someone more than $100/mo? (I know, it's insane to think that code would be worth that much but to some it may be.) So I guess I would ask you to reconsider: 1) The signaling issues around the idea that a quarter or a dollar is a reasonable amount to contribute for good programming. How do you explain to non-techies why your work is worth so much more than that? 2) The expected top end of the range for super-successful devs probably shouldn't be in the range of what recent grads are making at top firms. Again, I'm trying to be constructive, and I think that if you want to meet your goals of helping programmers find a living building open source software, you could do a lot worse than asking folks who choose to tip to do so in amounts that are commensurate with the education, training, and thought required to build useful open source software. Anyway, good luck with your project.
- kmfrk 14y agoThis is really cool. I look forwarding to support people in the Django community who make invaluable apps through this. I would prefer if I could reward people for specific repos, though. Otherwise people, myself included, will probably be clueless why I am receiving money, and as a result it won't create an incentive to improve a particular product. The text could read. Hey, I just met you, And this is crazy, But here's my money, So keep working on django-registration maybe.
- whit537 14y ago:-P +1 added here: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/7 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/7
- emddudley 14y agoI like the fact that the donations are per individual, rather than per project. It gives the recipients the freedom to explore other opportunities, rather than tying them down to their one popular project.
- kmfrk 14y agoI just want it there as an optional addition. People should totally be able to donate to the general GitHub account.
- ronnix 14y agoI like this, and I just signed up! Do you think tipping is something that GitHub might want to add as a core feature of their web site?
- whit537 14y agoCan't speak for GitHub, of course. They did try an experiment with Pledgie a few years back, but that fizzled: https://github.com/blog/57-getting-paid-the-open-source-way/ https://github.com/blog/57-getting-paid-the-open-source-way/
- patio11 14y agoTaking a cut of a transaction is a hard business to be in. Taking a cut of a microtransaction is an astronomically harder business to be in. Taking a cut of a microtransaction that has no reason to exist is even harder than that. I sympathize that devs want ways to get paid for developing software, but they exist, and they start with charging money for developing software and not futzing about with sub-latte level payments. Since you cannot meaningfully improve a dev's life with sub-latte payments, you will not successfully create a business on top of them.
- whit537 14y agoAnother +1 for https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180. I'm sensing a theme. :-) Re: creating a business: My goal is to find a living on Gittip directly, not by taking a cut. See: http://blog.gittip.com/post/27072581481/i-believe-in-gittip http://blog.gittip.com/post/27072581481/i-believe-in-gittip And: http://blog.gittip.com/post/26350459746/the-first-open-company http://blog.gittip.com/post/26350459746/the-first-open-compa...
- patio11 14y agoTalk to Gregory Brown, who is a Rubyist who has a monthly donation model, about the economics of doing this as a solo dev. (I know that factoid because he wrote a component which makes my business possible and I give him a sale a month as a donation -- which is the exact opposite of generous and I know that and yet I somehow can't justify ever doing more.) Making a living on Gittip is an implementation detail, not the goal itself, unless I'm greatly mistaken as to your internal calculus. Your goal is to make a living writing code with some X-factor about freedom or project selection, right? There are far better ways to do this. For example, you're currently looking for 50 hours a month of contracting or $2k of donations. This (and gittip) strongly, strongly suggest that you're undercharging for contracting, probably by a factor of 2x to 5x or higher. You can make a huge impact on your standard of living and job satisfaction just by raising rates, and the execution risk of that strategy is absurdly easier than hoping you hit the multiple independent dominoes you need to do to make the gittip plan work. There are other product offerings you could make as an OSS dev which would complement your desired lifestyle and be orders of magnitude more efficient that gittip. One such product offering is online training material, such as e-books, screencasts, etc. $2k a month is 40 copies of a $50 ebook, which is very achievable. Or it is a one-day make-your-employer-even-more-money-with-Python training session that you run every six months. Or it is... there are a lot of options here and they're all better than competing with baristas for tip money and losing.
- pbiggar 14y agoAll the people telling you to increase the price are right, and then some. So some advice: - dont focus so much on the individual developers, focus more on getting money in the system. You want to know how best to help an individual developer? It's by having lots of users, and lots of money. - first way you can help do this is by having a minimum monthly charge. I pay $150 a month on a database. I pay 4 digits worth of EC2 bills. I can afford a $10 minimum. - 2nd way is to strongly focus on enterprise plans. For $1000 a month, you get a big giant banner add on gittip, that everyone else sees every time they add a tip or receive one, or play with their settings. - dont make people spend the whole thing - distribute the excess to the developers that others have chosen, in proportion to how popular they are. Or use it to highlight projects you like, or projects for people who contribute money, or something like that. Stop focussing on the low end - bump up that price, and who cares if it's too expensive for some people. Giving $0.25 isn't charity - its actually costing you money.
- whit537 14y agoA +1 added to https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180 > minimum monthly charge Newly ticketed: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/185 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/185 > strongly focus on enterprise plans Existing ticket: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/106 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/106 > distribute the excess Similar existing ticket: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/93 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/93
- whit537 14y agoGah! Title changing feels gross. :-( Original: "After 7 weeks, 100+ people are funding open source devs $600/wk on Gittip.com" Problem: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013
- fromhet 14y agoExcuse me, but I don't understand why anyone would use this instead of flattr? Sorry for sounding blatant, but havent they got this micro-donation thing going quite well?
- whit537 14y agoHere's my take: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4239336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4239336