Thursday, June 11, 2026
Don’t buy me a coffee
Those “Buy Me a Coffee” links have upset the anonymous Hakkerblog, who finds them annoying.
Gordon Mclean and Michael Harley have defended them as mostly harmless.
I have never monetized Newsonaut and never will, but that’s mainly because of lessons learned from Thriftmac, my other site that specializes in free Mac apps.
Back in the day, I was all in with Google Ads and anything else that might make a dollar. In my best ever month, I got a cheque for about $200 from Google. Buy Me a Coffee didn’t exist back then, but I would have used it if it did.
At first it was fun, even exhilarating, but after awhile I got burned out. I realized that as a wage, $200 came to maybe a couple of dollars an hour.
I had to keep the engagement going — constantly thinking up new ideas, constantly finding interesting links. When I finally crashed, the blog part of Thriftmac was ripped out and it became just a fancy list of links to free Mac apps that was seldom updated.
At one point, someone offered to buy it from me for about $2,000. This seemed like a good way to go for a site I didn’t really care about any more, but when I looked at the buyer’s other sites, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Thriftmac was my baby, and I didn’t want to see it ruined.
Gradually I came to the realization that my motivation for Thriftmac didn’t have to be about making money. I now see it as a resource for people who, for whatever reason, can’t afford to pay for apps. I keep it up to date with new apps, and remove the ones that have gone to a paid model or that no longer work. I have even revived the blog part, although on a much less frequent basis.
It’s my own tiny contribution to making the web a better place. I’m not saying this has to be true for everyone, but for Thriftmac, it feels good to be free of any kind of monetization.
I hope the same can be said of Newsonaut. I try to be helpful, or at least entertaining. The site gets very few visitors, but I’m OK with that if those few people leave with something positive.
So don’t buy me a coffee. It would just spoil things for me.
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