Let them support you! First $15 on Ko-Fi

I’ll share a story how I get my first “coffees” on Ko-Fi, a place where you can get few bucks from people who would like to support you.

Or to use existing tweet:

It feels nice. I would suggest everyone to try new things every day. Switch yourself from “nobody will do that” to “let’s try this” mode.

I’ve put the ko-fi link on my blog without expectations. No big plans. More like to have it ready if someone would like to support what I’m doing. The text below is my attempt to warm up a visitor.

Imagine we met at a conference and I talked about things from this blog. You found it very useful and offered to buy me a coffee, so we could continue our talk at a booth, waiting for that next session we agreed to go together. I wouldn’t have anything against it. Next time it’s on me!

It happened that a person I’ve helped recently with something completely unrelated to the blog spotted it here and wanted to “buy me a coffee”. Nice feeling. Although I didn’t expect it to come like that, other way around. I was thinking more like – one day there will be a killer article, and I don’t want to miss a chance to “be supported”. After I’ve shared a generic tweet about it, I get one more coffee. The power of Twitter.

Why to put Ko-Fi button on technical blog or even git repo?

I'm a developer. And I write code. Sometimes I stuck. I stuck a lot. And I search for the solutions online. Google, StackOverflow, Github, you name it. And I know that I just described you, my dear reader. But don't worry, we're not alone. There are millions of us out there. And you know that feeling when you're stuck for the whole day, and you finally find a solution that works at the end of the day? What a relief.

Well, if you happen to write that solution (blogpost, SO answer, comment on github issue) that solved someone's problem, there is a high chance that somebody would like to thank you. And sometimes more than writing a simple "Thank you" comment.

The more specific field you cover, the better the chances. And if your solution is saving someone's time (and time is money), there's a chance someone will pay you. Don't expect wonders, we still don't have a habit to give money online to others as a thank you note.

So, think for a moment if you

• maintain a library
• have a technical blog with HOW-TO articles
• providing reusable code snippets
• share templates
• share development productivity "hacks"

maybe you can plug the button somewhere.

Ko-Fi Goals

Kofi platform offers you to create goals. But instead of creating some generic “I want a new computer” goal, I’m having a set of small goals that would help me improve myself. So it’s more like a general goal, split into smaller ones. I’ve started with the books. It felt natural choice. So, each of my Ko-Fi goals would be some book. I would buy it then for Kindle (that’s the price I’m putting on the goal). But this is actually setting up a ko-fi page. I don't believe too much into optimizing these pages, because nobody is exploring these platforms to find who to support next. If anyone will give you the money, they will come for another reason. Once they open the page, they will look for the action button. Where do I need to click to pay you. But, it doesn't do harm to set up that page as well.

Conclusion

The moral of the story – Go and set up those kofi, buy me a coffee, paypalme, patreon, whatever buttons next to your blog/profiles. You’re doing things for free anyway. You never know. Maybe there were several times when someone would like to donate you some small tip, but there just wasn’t a way. Provide that way.

But, on the other hand, you need to provide a good content too. Well, I can’t teach you that part. If I could, I would teach myself first.

If you have spare minute or two, go to my blog homepage and check what I’m usually writing about. Maybe you’ll find something for yourself.

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Like my blogposts? Here's my KoFi button.