Online tippers – another scam?

Posted on June 2nd, 2007 by Richard Catto 2,095 views

I saw this TipIt site today and of course I immediately wondered why anyone is going to trust them to actually deliver those "small" donations to the promised people?

I mean, come on, are South Africans really this gullible?

I slap up a site, tell you to make donations to third parties via me, and you trust me? Why?

What the heck is a .to domain anyway? I’ll tell you – it’s a SCAM domain! All the scammers register in Tonga!

Why? No extradiction treaty. Your domain is safe as houses.

If you want to be taken seriously, register a dot co dot za. We’re all above board here. Absolutely no scammers at all. Scam free zone here.

Anyway, I thought I’d leave them some helpful suggestions:

How do I know that you guys are trustworthy and won’t just take the money donated and run?

Furthermore, your business process is critically flawed.

Tippers must register and pay something into their account in advance (e.g. $5).

They must tip from their account balance. As they tip, you must immediately transfer the amount from their account balance to the site they are tipping.

Asking for payment after the fact is bogus. That will not work. You will have introduced unreliability into your system and no-one will trust that a tipped amount will in fact be paid.

Your system should provide a method for a person to tip a site which is not linked into your system. The tipper should enter the domain they wish to tip and then you generate some message containing a tipcode which the tipper can then email to the site, or copy and paste into the site’s contact form. The site owner will then need to register with you in order to receive the tip.

You need to charge a commission. None of this "we’re doing it for free bullshit". No-one believes that. It affects your credibility badly. Tippers can recharge in increments of say $5, $10 and $20, and your flat rate commission is 10%.

Accept PayPal.

If you guys can be trusted and you implement a well thought out system, this could become the next big thing. Don’t squander this opportunity you have created for yourselves. Do this thing right and everyone wins.

Good luck!

Filed under donations, Scam, scam warning, tipit, tippers | 1 Comment »