I've had enough coffee, it's time to get paid

This isn’t a poem. Woah, I know…

I want to talk about getting paid on Substack.

Recently, I started noticing many of the Writers I subscribe to adding “buy me a coffee” buttons. There’s a handful of third-party companies offering this service - Ko-fi, buymeacoffee, etc. and people add a link out to those platforms, where the transaction takes place. I like seeing new ways for us to interact with readers, and am considering adding a button myself, but I have reservations about the expectations that have been set by its use so far. Namely, the casual wording default (“kofi/coffee” is in the product domains themselves, making the connotation hard to change…) and fact that it takes place off-platform.

Ghost (a newsletter platform similar to Substack) just announced a Tips & donations feature directly in the product, using the existing Stripe configuration. This makes it easier for the Writer to add this way of getting paid to their newsletter, customize it as a “One-time payment” that can be re-named, and even better, it normalizes it as a first-party feature (rather than a third-party add-on you link-out to).

Bringing this into the platform adds credibility to the Ask, which I think we may be missing today. There’s something about the signal of asking someone to buy me a coffee that feels…incomplete. Like I’m asking the reader to read between the lines.

What I’d really put on my button is something like:

• I wanted this to work out as a full-time thing (laugh if you want about my naivety)
• I really don’t want to do brand-sponsored posts or affiliate links
• Help me pay rent

But, I don’t want to be overly dramatic, or self-important here. And there are different ways that work for different people (the ones above are my perspective and don’t mean to call into question other people).

The reality is I do have a job, and I know there are social norms around being self-sufficient and never “Asking for Money” - but increasingly, we are needing to take on more and more work to support our basic needs. And it feels like I’m trivializing it if I ask for coffee. I see a lot of Writers tip-toe around saying this, so I’ll say it: I’m asking for money, if you value what I made.

In my experience, “buying someone a coffee” was a scenario with friends and colleagues. People I had (or wanted) reciprocal relationships with - “I’ll get it this time, you can pick it up next time!” A reason to meet again, and keep the money-side OUT of the equation, while we enjoyed each other’s company. Is that what we’re trying to do, at scale, here? Keep money out of the equation and make this a reciprocal exchange (I’ll buy you one, you buy me one next time?).

For this reason, I’m wondering, and asking with curiosity here, if there is a better framing that elevates Tips from “Buy me a Coffee” to something more personalized to what we each need out of the platform? Not in a way where we each debate the merits of sponsored posts, or Your-Way-is-Worse - no! let’s not go at each other. If it were customizable and on Substack directly, we could each make those decisions for ourselves.

My way would go something like this:

I like that Ghost offers an ability for people to write a note about their tip. Perhaps we could encourage this level of gratitude on the platform:

“If you enjoyed this Post, please consider Tipping with your favorite part, or a reflection, in the Note” (the Tip could be attached to a Comment, even!)

or something timely that week:

“I really enjoy buying flowers, they allow me to interact with my neighborhood flower shop and have inspired 3-4 stories on this newsletter. Would you consider a Tip to my flower fund?”

What we really want is to be appreciated and paid, and have the platform realize this without us needing to go somewhere else with “coffee” in the name. What we do with the Tip is up to us, but let’s start normalizing it and explore new ways to interact with it, beyond the recurring subscriptions.

I encourage Substack to open up this dialogue on the newsletter, and ask for our feedback broadly. There have been many excellent comments and feature requests on unrelated posts mentioning this sort of idea, and I would love to see it elevated to the official channels so we can discuss and try things on.

What do you think?