Tips for Authors - updated slightly

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I've finally got a way to PAY authors for contributions! That's right. It's called TipJoy, and it allows readers to send as little as 5 cents to authors whose work they enjoy. Hey, every little bit, right?

Authors who want to participate can go to their |My account| page, hit the |Edit| tab and scroll down to where there are instructions on how to put a tipjar on their stories. It's just a matter of putting a TipJoy account number in a box. If you don't have a TipJoy account number, there's a link to get one. Or you can use mine, erinhalfelven. "bigcloset" (no quotes). Of course, if you use bigcloset, I'll get the tips but they will go to help support the site by buying me books so I can put my book money in the kitty.

If you want the money, and that's great, you need a TipJoy account to collect the money in and when you have more than $5 bucks in your tipjar, you can cash out with an Amazon gift card or a donation to charity. Cash withdrawals will be available from TipJoy sometime later but there's no promised time table.

If any author doesn't want to collect the money for themselves, they can send the money to me by putting bigcloset in the TipJoy username box at |My Account|-|Edit|. I'll buy books from Amazon with it and pay TopShelf back from my pocket. :)

There's also a site wide tipbox in the right hand column of most pages that goes direct to me.

You can donate tips without a TipJoy account. Just provide your email. Once you've donated $5, TipJoy will send you a bill by email and you can pay by credit card or a couple of other ways -- or log on to the site and CANCEL all of your tips, you cheapskate. :)

I'm not sure how well this works for Non-US people, an Amazon gift card might be worthless outside America since Amazon has different divisions overseas. I'll ask them.

Ask me anything else you want to know about this but I think it's very cool. :)

Hugs,
Erin

TipJoy

If anyone wants to tip any of my stories, just put it in Erin's account. She needs all she can get for these sites.

Love,
Billie Sue

Billie Sue

I Agree

With Billie Sue, all tips for my stories go to Erin. May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Nothing

erin's picture

But they might as well not leave a tip at all, then. Nothing would happen unless they did that fifty times so the bogus email addy would have $5, triggering TipJoy getting a hold of someone to verify the tips. No verification, the tips get deleted.

People who actually have accounts with TipJoy should police their accounts to see that no one is doing this and they can cancel bogus tips. TipJoy can trace the IPs of people who leave bogus tips and ban them.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Tracing IPs

Puddintane's picture

Sadly, most IP addresses are dynamically-assigned by one's provider when one logs onto their servers, and come from a pool of such numbers shared across all subscribers who use a particular subscriber. This number will change every time any particular user logs on, and will only identify the same subscriber at random intervals that may approach the half-life of Plutonium.

If one has dedicated Internet access, in other words, would be able to host a website from one's own computer, one can trace an exact address, but for most users, and probably almost all of those most likely to create false tip records, the IP address that generated it is no more useful for identification than would be knowing the general region in which the prankster lives.

Finding out that there is an idiot who lives in Washington, DC, is not sufficient information to identify anyone, even though someone may naturally spring to mind.

Cheers,

Puddin'

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

It's not quite as hard as that

erin's picture

For every edge, there's a counter edge so you end up with an arms race of how to identify people on the web. I'm not going to get into the discussion of how to do it but there are ways.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

we thought of it :)

Hi, I'm cofounder of Tipjoy. Glad to see new sites using it!

Payment comes later and for tips is completely voluntary, so if someone puts in your email address, you aren't left owing some money. You'd actually get an email with your password, so you'd already have full control over the account.

We've received zero complaints from people who have had their email address submitted to the service. Even someone who signed up as [email protected] didn't get a note from MS. :D

Erin, Like the others, if

KristineRead's picture

Erin,

Like the others, if anyone feels that something I have written is worthy please just give to the site. I'm doing this for fun, not for profit.

Erin, I did what you said, but then it looks like I'm looking for tips, and as a relatively new author, I don't want people to think I'm looking for tips. Maybe there is a way to have a box that says, tips for the site or somehting like that.

Hugs,

Kristy

Don't worry about it :)

erin's picture

I'll work on something like that, too. But leave it as is, I want people to see the tip boxes cause I think this will be good.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

I'll Be In That

joannebarbarella's picture

If anyone thinks what I write is worth a tip it can go to the upkeep of this site,
Joanne

As far as I'm concerned

any tips that might come my way can go to help keep the site up and running.

"So let it be written, so let it be done."

Huggles,
Catherine Linda Michel

As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script. Y_0.jpg

In order for the tip box to appear on stories ...

erin's picture

Authors have to go into |My Account| choose the |Edit| tab, scroll down to the TipJoy info and put in a user name. There's a stab for creating a TipJoy user name there but if you want the tips to go to the site, put in "bigcloset" (no quotes). Otherwise, just saying you want the tips to go to the site doesn't get the tipjar to appear. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Tips

Okay, I think I've directed the tips to the site here. hope so. Sometimes I'm such an idiot with the simple things - always looking for a method that's harder than necessary, I guess. lol. Failing that, any tips given to my stories will be redirected to Big Closet by me.

You are not authorized to access this page.

Erin,

Was the message I got when I went to Edit like you instructed. It said my login was sucessful.

Danielle

"A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position."

Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant

I think you have to...

delete your persistent login, then log out and then log in again. Something about persistent login doesn't quite work right with that part of the site. It's a known bug/feature of the software.

Arwen

Not delete

erin's picture

Just logout and log back in. The really private parts of the site want you to have a more current login than one that might be a week old.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Sorry Erin

I was trying to remember what you told me a very long time ago.

Arwen