Hey, Ivan, I realize this isn't the right venue, but I'm not sure what is, so...
I like you guys's product a lot. The execution's really clean, and it seems that all that needs proving is the model itself.
My thought, though, is that you guys would drive a lot more tips if you focused on the people doing the tipping rather than the sites being tipped. Although there's certainly some altruism involved in tipping, I think the underlying drive for most when giving to charity is much more selfish. In real life, people make large donations to get their name put on buildings or to be respected as philanthropists. People tip in restaurants to not look cheap in front of their date and contribute to political campaigns so they can tell their friends they put their money where their mouth is.
In all of those situations, there's at least the ability to prove to other members of society that you did tip. In the case where you've tipped well beyond what might have been expected, you even get to be famous.
All of this comes down to the question: Why not provide widgets that show the top X tippers for a given website? You get peer pressure via the suggestion that you should be tipping like these guys, and you let the people kicking in lots of money feel special and be a minor celebrity within that community. Seems like it could really up the usage of your product.
There is an issue of privacy, in that people might not want their tipping advertised. That said, we're definitely going down this path. We'll make the experience very open and social. I think the widgets idea is really excellent.
As for the right forum, we've had another idea which we'll implement soon: an open tippable forum. The feedback form here:
tipjoy.com/feedback
Will soon have the option to "make this public". Below it will be a ranked set of feedbacks given. Users can tip the feedback (and the tips will go to the submitter) to get the features they want.
I'm really excited about making this open and extensible, so tipjoy could provide a feedback forum for other sites as well.
