The significance of virtual tips in boosting your creativity as a creator cannot be undermined. One of the undeniable advantages is that it makes you feel recognized and supported, and also provides a direct way to monetize your content.

Think of it this way, while you wait to get brand partnerships and make money as an influencer, you can leverage tips to accept support from your audience and get the recognition you deserve.

This recognition encourages you to create more high-quality content, eventually leading you to your desired brand partnerships.

We understand the importance of being supported as a creator, and we’ve written this article with 7 top virtual tipping platforms for creators like you. So you can check it out and allow your audience to support your work.

1. Show Love

Show Love is one of the best tipping platforms for African creators to receive support for their content. It is Selar’s new feature that allows your audience, community, supporters, fans, etc. to express their appreciation and support to you in meaningful ways.

Being a virtual tipping platform, it enables you to receive cash gifts from anyone, anywhere in the world.

The beauty of Show Love is that you don’t need to have a digital product to use Show Love. This means you don’t need to sell a digital product on Selar to be able to use Show Love. However, you need a Selar account, so all your funds go directly to your Selar wallet, which you can withdraw instantly to your bank account.

Show Love accepts Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klasha, as well as local payment methods such as bank transfer and USSD in Nigeria. And the best part is, it’s not only your audience that can tip you. Anyone who enjoys your content can generously leave you a tip.

Even better, Show Love can be used for various functions; accepting tips during live sessions like webinars, crowdfunding, birthday giveaways, non-profit donations, events, etc. If it requires an online donation or monetary value, you can do it with Show Love.

You can also add your Show Love link to all your social platforms where you share your content.

It’s totally free to create a show love page and Selar charges only a small amount for every successful transaction, which would be available during payouts.

Learn more about Selar’s Show Love feature.

2. Buy Me a Coffee

Buy Me a Coffee is another creator support platform that makes it easy to get appreciated for your work as a creator. As the name implies it’s a platform that allows your audience to “buy” you a coffee. The default price of a coffee starts at $5 but you can set yours within the range of $1 to $5.

This platform is versatile, as it comes with a gallery, blogging section, and lots of other features to engage an audience. Since every platform allows you to add a URL in your bio, you can add your Buy Me a Coffee link to any platform where you share your content.

On checkout, your supporters are shown the term “Buy Me a Coffee.” But you can choose to change this from coffee to anything else that suits you.

Payouts on Buy Me a Coffee are processed using Stripe depending on how you set up your page. You can also have monthly subscriptions, wishlists, and memberships, or sell extra things on your page.

For monthly subscriptions, Buy Me a Coffee automatically debits your supporter’s account every month. The same applies to memberships, only that it is a smaller group of your biggest supporters where communication is made.

Wishlists on Buy Me a Coffee is pretty simple and unique, as it allows you to share tools you need to help make your work more effective. This way when you request support from your audience, they can see what you’ll likely use the money for, making them trust you even more.

Buy Me a Coffee is free to use but there is a 5% transaction fee on all payments. Overall, Buy Me a Coffee is a robust monetization platform for creators looking to make money off their content.

3. Tip Jar

Tip Jar is ConvertKit’s virtual tipping feature that enables creators to receive support for their work. With Tip Jar, you can directly ask your email subscribers to support your work or content.

Once you set up your page, you can easily customize it to your taste and maintain your branding across all your channels.

Like other platforms, once you’ve set up your tip jar, you can share it across your social media pages or even add it directly to your bio or embed it on your website. You can also add it to your emails. Since ConvertKit is an emailing platform for creators, adding your tip jar link in your newsletter is a good way to get more subscribers to see it.

Tip jar offers various set amounts for tipping – $5, $10, $20, $50 and gives your audience the option of entering an amount.

One of the top benefits of using Tip Jar is that you can leverage ConvertKit’s automation features to automatically reach out to people who send you a tip.

This can come in handy when you have an ongoing early access promo or discount or freebies to give. They can be the first to benefit from it since they tipped you before.

To enjoy all the features of ConvertKit, combine Tip Jar with ConvertKit Commerce, which essentially is an online store that enables you to sell all kinds of digital products. If that’s not an option, you can still use Tip Jar as a stand-alone product.

ConvertKit takes a 0.6% charge on every tip you earn, which is a considerably low fee especially if you’re just using the Tip Jar feature.

4. Twitter Tips

Tips is a Twitter feature that allows you to add payment links to third-party apps on your Twitter profile. Ordinarily, people share their payment details on their feed but with tips, you don’t need to do that anymore.

This means that if you’re crowdfunding, there’s no need to share your payment details on Twitter. You can leverage the tip feature and share a payment link to your preferred tipping platform.

Also, when you turn on Tips on your profile, people can send you money or cryptocurrency off the X platform. However, you’d have to link to your Cash App, Patreon, Venmo, and other platforms where people can support you. This way your supporters will be directed off X to the third-party tipping platform on your profile.

For cryptocurrency, you can add your Bitcoin address to Tips so people can copy and paste the address to a Bitcoin wallet to send you a payment.

According to X, when you add a third-party payment service to your profile, your username on that service will be publicly linked to your X account. Information about you, including, but not limited to, your full name, address, and tip may be shared with the recipient or others, subject to the terms of the third-party payment service.

X doesn’t take any charge for any tips you receive. When you receive a tip, it is done off the X platform, hence the only charges you pay are those set by the third-party payment services you use.

5. Tips on TikTok

Similar to tips on Twitter, TikTok tips allow you as a creator to accept tips from your audience to show their appreciation. But it comes with various limitations.

According to TikTok,

• You can only tip a certain amount each day, and there’s a maximum amount you can tip. These amounts will differ depending on your country.
• You can’t tip more than 100 times each day.
•  You must live in a location where Tips is available. This feature is not available everywhere.
• You must be based in the US, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, or Spain.
• You must be 18 years of age or older.
• You’ll need at least 100,000 followers.
• Your account must be in good standing and adhere to their Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
• You must have a personal account. Business accounts are ineligible to participate.

Unlike others, tipping on TikTok happens directly on TikTok. Meaning, your supporters can send you tips through your TikTok account due to Stripe’s partnership with TikTok that enables them to process payments to you.

To use Tips on TikTok, you’ll have to formally apply through your profile. If approved, you will see a Tips icon appear on your profile. You will be able to see your tips immediately you receive them but it may take up to 24 hours to appear in your Stripe account. So you must have a Stripe account to receive your tips and withdraw them into your local bank account.

Supporters who send you a tip will see preset amounts like $5, $10, $15, and $20 but they will be able to customize the amount. They can also send the tip anonymously and they wouldn’t be identified on the list of supporters who tip you.

TikTok doesn’t take any charge on any Tip you receive. You get to keep 100% of the amount after Stripe’s processing fees.

6. Zink

Zink is another virtual tipping platform for creators that empowers you by providing a direct avenue for you to receive financial support from your audience.

Regardless of the type of creator you are, Zink allows you to receive cash gifts from your audience in both USD and cryptocurrency.

What makes Zink very unique is that it integrates seamlessly across various online platforms such as Canva, Discord, Medium, etc.

Additionally, it offers micro-tip options for your content. That is, your supporters can drop tips from $0.05. This ensures no one is left out. Everybody can give you a tip regardless of their income size.

On Zink, you can also track and collect your earnings as soon as you hit $5. However, you pay a 5% transaction fee if you’re not yet ZinkVerified. It’s a membership plan for Zink that saves you all the platform fees for a $5 per month membership fee.

You can actively promote your Zink Tip link across various digital platforms, thereby encouraging your audience to support your work and creating a financial source for your work.

By integrating Zink into your monetization strategy, you can diversify your revenue streams. This added financial stability allows you to focus on producing high-quality content without the constant worry about traditional funding challenges.

7. Linktree

Linktree is a popular link-in bio tool used to display links to all your works as a creator in one place. It is a versatile platform that allows creators to compile multiple links into a single, visually appealing landing page.

However, this link-in bio tool has grown to include donation features that allow you to receive tips or donations for various causes.

The platform offers one-time tip links and request links for commissions or merch. You can accept tips with PayPal, Venmo, or Square.

Similar to other platforms, Linktree has preset amounts for tipping which can be customized by your audience. It also allows your audience to send you a personalized message and cover the transaction fee.

Creators can strategically place virtual tip jars within their Linktree, encouraging their audience to contribute directly. This seamless integration enhances the user experience and makes the tipping process more accessible.

In addition to the virtual tipping feature, Linktree is launching a “Buy Me a Gift” feature similar to Tip Jar. Buy Me a Gift is a new way for fans to say thank you to their favorite creators in a simple way.

Creators can pick from five emoji gift options that represent what a fan’s gift means to them. The emojis you can choose from include the coffee emoji, taco emoji, cake emoji, beer emoji, or present emoji. Then, they can set a price and connect their PayPal or Square account to get paid. Linktree says it won’t charge any transaction fees for a limited time.

Generally, Linktree serves as a multifaceted platform, not only streamlining link sharing but also providing creators with the tools to monetize their audience effectively.

Conclusion

Being a creator allows you to build a community of people who love you and enjoy your work. As your relationship grows, they believe in you enough to give tips for your work, as a means of encouragement.

Your success as a creator largely depends on your audience’s perception of your work. Because if nobody wants it, who are you then creating for?

We know we won’t decide for you. But as an African creator, Show Love is the best tipping platform to receive tips and donations from your audience.

Before you doubt it, how about you give it a try?