Buy Me a Beer Wordpress Plugin
Ankesh Kothari just released new WordPress plugin that allows my blog readers to buy me a beer via PayPal.
The plugin adds a “Buy Me a Beer” button to your sidebar and at the bottom of every post. When your readers click on the button, they are taken to the secure PayPal page so they can donate money for your drinking habits. For people who prefer non-alcoholic drinks, there is a setting to replace the beer mug with a coffee cup.
I haven’t given donation as an online moneymaking method much thought. However, I do know that it can be a viable source of revenue. Steve Pavlina has stated more than once that his second biggest income source, after Google AdSense, is donations from readers. Ankesh has been testing the buy me a beer plugin on his blog. The results so far are:
5800 unique visitors. 3 people bought me a beer (Total $11). Not much, but still more than what AdSense pays me for that same blog.
Ankesh can add another $7.50 to that total because I just brought him a pitcher for the plugin. It’ll be interesting to see if any readers will buy me a beer. I’m really thirsty. Please buy me a beer!
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Trackbacks
- Shawn-Knight.net » Buy Me A Beer! - May 24, 2007 at 5:25 pm
- Kúp mi kávu Wordpress plugin » embuck - May 24, 2007 at 11:33 pm
- Kúp mi kávu Wordpress plugin » embuck - May 24, 2007 at 11:33 pm
- Das “Buy Me a Beer”-Plugin | TechNovelty - May 25, 2007 at 1:16 am
- Thanks For The Beer « John Chow dot Com - May 25, 2007 at 2:00 am
- Get Your Readers Buy You a Beer - May 25, 2007 at 3:22 am
- blogpaul :: tech . tattoos . talk » Stolen Speedlinks - May 25, 2007 at 7:30 am
- If you liked this post then buy me a beer! - Earners Forum - May 25, 2007 at 8:51 am
- Jane May Blogs » Blog Archive » Tecates Are My Favorite! - May 25, 2007 at 10:39 am
- The Name Say’s It All » Blog Archive » Are You Getting “Buzzed”? - May 25, 2007 at 12:06 pm
- Paypal Me Poison - Buy Me a Beer Wordpress Plugin at The Gospel According To Rhys - May 26, 2007 at 12:02 am
- Buy me a pizza! | Nafurai - May 26, 2007 at 4:11 am
- Shaine › John Chow’s Site is a Good Resource for Bloggers - May 26, 2007 at 1:22 pm
- Wordpress Plugin: Buy me a Beer - Tobbis Blog - Aktuelles über Windows, Opera & Co. gebloggt von Tobias Steinicke - May 27, 2007 at 2:03 am
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- Make Money Online - May 2007 « John Chow dot Com - June 1, 2007 at 11:26 am
- Mobile Computing » Blog Archive » Hot Links for Friday 01 June - June 11, 2007 at 12:32 am
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I’m betting at least $300 towards this month’s revenue will come from this.
And now I see TTZ Media ads in place of adsense on the posts! What the hell’s going on! So many changes…
Diversifying? Trying to be his own boss? Better ROI? Who knows…
self-promotion
TTZ ads will be the next big thing in blog advertisement revenues…
Just wait and watch.
hmm, i doubt it
Haha I was half joking, only because I’m the one who’s coding the entire project. Just my ego.
I notice you and John and have been testing the new TTZ ads on your server. When is it going to be released? Need more beta testers?
When I finish the development of the product catalog, and brush up some other features here and there.. then we’ll release it.
I’ve got the new beta of TTZ running as well on my site. It’s quite a bit easier to use than the old version.
Its a fun looking plug in but a bit of a cheap shot really, kinda like online begging, as opposed to the ‘donate’ buttons which are used to support charities or open source projects….
On anohther note, have I got this right….
JC sells links with no follow for $10 per month, then announces he is going to stop Google indexing the comments pages to avoid having pages in the suplimental index
i disagree – i think it makes my interaction with John more personal than a “donate” button.
as a beer lover, i hope he’s actually going to buy that beer with the money i donated. thus , there’s more of a personal interaction going on there.
to be honest, if he put up a “donate” button i wouldnt have bothered, as i see donate’s all over the place. but after reading his “google supplemental” post, i just felt i HAD to buy him a beer (big problem with supplemental on some of the sites i manage = john chow gets a beer for the heads up on this issue..)
sure, with jc’s traffic, it’s easily achieved
Thats a big chance yes
John, I would buy you beer but I’m afraid you’re going to go for that “sissy” Smirnoff. I cannot have my money go to waste like that.
Promise me that you’ll drink a real man brand of beer and I’ll buy forthwith
why use the word sissy
i think you’re being sexist
Don’t knock the Smirnoff! However, if you really want, I promise to get a real beer just for you!
Don’t let them give you any guff about your choice of beverage John, I’m an astonishingly girly drinker myself.
But not that girly.
I stick to fruity blue stuff…but at least they don’t come with parasol umbrellas!
Smirnoff and beer — there is no contest. I absolutely love them both LOL.
I got an email from him too about the beer. I think I’ll put it on mine also! Beers anyone
Oh ya?
YA!
JC you’re evil making a post about something that is controversial. Now people will comment on this and we’ll have a good discussion going….
He’s so evil and we can’t do anything to stop him!
Not really controversial. just donations. Not even intrusive or anything.
Agreed, it’s actually a very sensible way to approach donation requests. Changes it from begging to something that you’d do for an acquaintance in a social setting.
hmmm, social begging
You should take it off the contact form page. It appears at the very top of the page and looks really off.
I’m interested to see what you can bring in with this puppy.
Good luck John!
Ankesh Kothari is the one who deserves the beer
That’s why I brought him a pitcher!
Is it that crap Canadian beer?!
careful…
Yeah that’s a dangerous statement…
Very dangerous… at least, we’re not drinking over-watered piss over here
Okanagan Springs beer, sleemans, Alexandre Keith can kick Pissweiser’s ass anytime.
King of beers my ass.
it’s not nice
That’s nice of you!
I should do so too, because I adopted his idea and wrote a “Buy me a Beer” module for Drupal.
must have clicked the wrong link
I wanted to reply to John’s reply on my comment.
i bought him a beer – for that Google Supplemental post earlier. Three bucks isnt going to kill me.
John I think you made enough money last month to buy us beers instead!
hmm, you’d like that , wouldn’t you
An online beer fest sponsored by John through his buy-me-a-beer campaign — not a bad idea!
I agree with Amanda. Buy us some beer!
haha, should be.. “Can I buy you a beer, send me your paypal email here”
I gotcha John…enough for the both of us
Actually it’s nothing else than a donation link and I’m quite sure that I’ve already seen it somewhere
I love that idea…I have a regular donate button but this would be soo much cooler. Too bad it’s for wordpress and not blogger..
What’d be REALLY sweet is if he actually made some videos of him drinking the beer that people donated. might be dangerous but entertaining.
thats an excellent idea!
or maybe just a photo of the beer that he bought from your donation. nice feedback idea there.
john should post a video too
John, if every suscriber gives you a beer, when you will post agani?
if people donate to john.. will they donate to someone like me?
Worth a shot huh? I could always use extra money to help pay bills etc.
Who couldn’t use the help?
No, even a better idea… use the beer money to start hosting local pub nights for marketing brainstorming and business ideas.. this would be great and Id make the trek to vancouver for one!
this would also solidify readership in my opinion.
i doubt you’d get enough money though
I want to see pictures of John actually drinking these beer though
That would be a great addition to the restaurant reviews.
Is there a girl version with a Long Island Iced Tea?
if you dont use Wordpress, all you need to do is substitute john’s email address in the URL with your own paypal email. then anchor it with “Long island iced tea” on your own blog. nice blog design you have there.
have a look at the url that john is using – its pretty straightforward to incorporate that using href tags into your own blog , no matter what the platform.
(i’ve done it in blogger)
unlike john, my buy me a beer doesnt appear at the bottom of every post. but i have it as a blob on the top right.
It’s just a mildly modified “Donation” button that you can get directly from PayPal. You could have very easily created a custom version yourself.
but everyone is “adsense blind” to those donate buttons.
being more upfront with the “buy me a beer” idea is much better. its more eye catching. but no doubt , it wont last long – i’d give it about 3 months until we all get “adsense blind” to the buy-me-a-beer meme.
Is it possible to modify it so it can be used in other blogs other than wordpress?
if you dont want it at the end of EVERY blogpost, then yeah. its just a hyperlink. swap out john’s paypal email address for your own and your good to go.
i’m on the blogger platform, and i have it on the top right. just click on my url to see it.
Yeah, John looks like a lightweight…
Hope you are thirsty sir, I just sent over a full pitcher! Enjoy!
Actually, I never gave much thought to accepting donations, but I tried it and guess what? I made triple the amount in donations than I did in Adsense this month!
So, it does work!
Beer on me, my friend. Enjoy
WOW – Thank you! This coffee mug goes so nicely with the coffee yahoo smiley I just got ~o)
The buy me a beer thing is nothing new. There’s a script for it too.
http://www.buy-me-a-drink.com/
Speaking of beer, we haven’t seen a food review in ages.
Re: the food reviews
Thank God for that…
Don’t you mean ‘beer’ blind! Well that’d put quite a few brewers out of business!
I don’t think!
With all the beer money John will be getting, he could try a few different brands and post a review on the best beer he’s had.
A refreshing take on the food reviews, wouldn’t you say? I miss the food reviews, though; now I just rely on TV commercials for sudden bursts of cravings.
Most excellent of an idea and will fit perfect with my community dude. I love when I can come get cools ideas and exploit them for my own beer drinking gains!
Great plugin I have implemented it on my blog too. Lets see if i get any beer buyers.
It’s a good thing you switched from Smirnoff Ice.
As long as you don’t buy an O’Doul’s.
John
I would like to buy you a BEER but i dun ave Paypal. In Malaysia, we dun get to CASH out from paypal.
Darn
He emailed me too about it. I may add one as a lot of my readers said they’d buy me a beer.
My donations page was similarly themed towards the amber nectar though
http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk/donations/
thats interesting…it will be nice to know how this performs
If nothing else i see this as great motivation for college students to start a blog. It would have gotten me started sooner.
You and me both, Matt.
cool,sounds interesting.
All this buzz for beer — looks like the plug-in is giving you more than just free booze, John, great thinking!
Dont get drunk with all this beer.i gonna start “Buy me a Glass of Wine” since now i need a diet.:)
A glass of wine is said to be a healthy part of one’s daily diet — provided you’re old enough to drink and you actually stick to a glass per day. Cheers to you, man!
Do you need a Business Paypal account for this to work?
Thanks for the post John.I installed the coffee version and I am waiting to see how it works.
I changed the icon to a martini glass, I’m not a fan of beer.
I wonder if there is an e-gold version?
I think it’s time that I got my buzz on! I really think this is a give to receive type plug in. Let’s see if anyone want to buy me some coffee’s or beer!
This is a cool idea/plugin but it’s not to hard to just add a paypal link to your template. I usually prefer to do that instead of adding more and more plugins to my sites.
But from the creator’s perspective, this was genius. This plugin has generated a ton of buzz and I’m sure a ton of links for him.