Make it easy for your audience to support your free content by adding a Tip Jar to your Squarespace website.

Thinking about adding a virtual Tip Jar to your site? Two great options are Buy Me a Coffee and creating your own Tip Jar with Stripe.

Buy Me a Coffee

Buy me a coffee is super easy to set up and it's what I used for many years.

1. Go to https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ to start your page.

2. Add your photo, name, bio, and website info.

3. Choose your payout method. You can select a payout to your bank (requires a $20 minimum for withdrawal) or connect Stripe for instant payouts.

4. Add your Tip Jar link to your Squarespace website.

Pros: Social Proof

One nice thing about Buy Me a Coffee is that it contains Social Proof signaling. You can see how many supporters someone has and read their comments.

Cons: confusing /math

The major drawback for Buy Me a Coffee is that the tip interface is confusing. Each coffee is $5 so math is required to figure out how many coffees to buy to give you a certain amount of support. This creates friction, which is never a good thing when someone wants to give you money.

Another con is that Buy Me a Coffee charges a 5% transaction fee, which makes sense to help support their platform, but you can create your own Tip Jar and avoid this.

Create your own Tip Jar with Stripe

If you already have a Stripe account, this method gives you a lot more control and is really easy to set up.

1. Log into your Stripe account at https://stripe.com/ and click to create a Payment Link.

2. Change any default Payment Link options.

3. Add your Tip Jar link to your Squarespace website.

4. Optional: Create a short link like https://christyprice.com/tip to make it easy to remember using URL Mapping (watch the end of the video below for the exact steps).

Pros: FLEXIBILITY + LOWER FEES

With one click your supporters can input any dollar amount to tip you. They don’t need to do any math OR go through a complicated check-out system (why I recommend this method even if you use Squarespace e-commerce for products or services).

You also don’t pay any additional fees over the normal Stripe processing fee.

Cons: No SOCIAL PROOF

The only drawback of this method compared to Buy Me a Coffee is that there’s no social proof. But if someone clicks your Tip Jar link they are likely going to tip you anyway, right?