I'm really interested in what the conversion rate is, but I understand you might not have that data yet or want to release it. I don't think a low rate is an invalidation of tipjoy at all incidentally, as long as its not zero of course.
The rates widely vary from 100% to 0%. It's hard to get an average from that. It'll always be hard to get a single number, as they'll be content and site dependent.
Soon we'll publish numbers that the average blogger can use.
Actually I think it makes more sense if you don't report pledges as a monetary amount (at least not directly). It feels a bit like a rip off when the real amount is inevitably lower and any potential users is going to be trying to do the conversion rates for any figure they see. A user report might say you got 100 pledges and $5 this week.
Already a lot of people are worried about people tipping and absconding - I think you should redefine the way people think about your tips: its a way of showing your appreciation which you can convert into real money at convenient times. Don't fight the people who want to show appreciation and not pony up the cash, and don't fight with bloggers to see the pledge amounts as real dollar amounts when they won't be.
We expect some percentage to pay, and showing the full amount might encourage people to pay.
Regardless of whether they pay, it is already a way to show appreciation.
Perhaps we should make it clearer that only paid tips affect the top tips ranking. Either way, I think this is going to be a decentralized service: payment rates will vary by communities on different sites. Don't fight the internet.
At https://tipit.to/ we don't normally count pledges. We do display them, but in gray. Right now in our top charts I've turned on a little flag so that pledges are included in the front page top charts algorithm, but that's just for the launch. I'll turn that off sometime soon.
One of the main reasons we do this is because not counting pledges automatically reduces on welching. When an unpaid tip is something only you yourself can see, then there's absolutely no point in pledging a tip without any intention of paying it. The only welching going on would be those that honestly forgot. Either way, it doesn't drag down the validity and utility of the statistics.
Interesting. The other side of the coin is that encouraging people to click that button is the first step in getting real money. I don't think I could tell you which is a better idea without seeing stats for both, even then...
There is a two step process: tip and then "give more". The max on "give more" is $10 for now.
I'm not sure why someone would pledge an enormous amount of money. It is becomes a problem, we'll just report amount paid, or amount pledged by known sane users.
We'll be smart with the top tips page to try to make this harder. That is the only page where this would be a problem, and lots of people will only pay attention to what they've tipped, and and what their friends are tipping.
You can't tip yourself very easily-- you'd have to create dummy accounts, I think. And the list is topped by paid tips-- so theoretically you could buy yourself to to top of the list (I'm sure TipJoy would HATE that!).
