Our insight after getting into the audio space was that podcasters are relatively happy with monetization. This is obviously not a popular opinion, but that's what we saw first hand. Ad rates are pretty good, and unlike other content types, listeners enjoy host-read ads. Meanwhile, Buy Me A Coffee started getting a decent amount of traction even among podcasters, so we wanted to go all in and build it out :)
We are the same company/team, and our goal is to help creators get paid for their work. With Brew, we focused on audio creators. Everything we built so far revolved around this vision :)
I don't want to speak for YC, but the partners want you to iterate and succeed. Many of the successful YC companies (Reddit, Brex) got accepted for a completely different idea.
Hey, I just came across your tweet [1] and wanted to say that we think about this a lot. The most effective way to attract more contributions is to offer something extra or exclusive. Obviously, this is not possible for everyone, so we designed Buy Me A Coffee in a way that every supporter and their comment gets featured on the top. We then notify the creators and encourage them to reply. This way, the act of supporting itself becomes the reward.
Thanks again for the feedback, and thank you for your blog!
We do have a bug bounty and encourage bug reports from our users (https://twitter.com/PJijin/status/1186904518341955584). The policy mentioned above is to avoid any damages to the creator(s) on the platform. Thanks for the feedback!
Hey, this is Jijo from Buy Me A Coffee. Thanks for the feedback! We believe 5% is a reasonable fee to build and maintain a platform that allows creators to connect with their audience and generate more income.
One way to look at it is the % of additional revenue they earn because of Buy Me A Coffee.
To be clear, there are no circumstances under which we'll unpublish an LGBTQ creator. Here's a fantastic writer that I've been following for years who recently joined Buy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pSzjB85
Our community manager deals with account reviews, and she is more knowledgeable to answer the initial question. I shouldn't have said 'AFAIK' either way, my apologies.
>How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activism? Does this include creators who create instructional content while showing non-nipple cleavage? Does this include creators involved in sex-ed/harm reduction campaigns?
None of these are against the terms AFAIK. We unpublish creators who promote explicit pornography or nudity. Broadly speaking, we abide by the content restrictions of the vendors and payment processors we work with. More on that can be found here: https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses