I put up a "tipping" box the other day, fully expecting that, within a year, it might net me the price of a box of Fig Newtons. Amazingly, quite a few of you have "tipped" in the last day and a half…and I thank you all.
One thing I learned in setting this up is that, if you tip websites, you oughta tip big. This is because PayPal — which is what I'm using to pass the hat — takes too big a bite out of tiny payments. Their fee is 30¢ on each payment plus 2.9%. This means that on a ten dollar transaction, they only get 60¢ but on a one dollar tip, PayPal takes a third. (They take a smaller percentage with their merchant accounts). Amazon-dot-com, which some folks use for this purpose, charges 15¢ plus 15%. This means that they get 30¢ on a dollar tip and $1.65 on a ten dollar gratuity.
Learning this has changed the way I tip when I web-surf. Instead of making a lot of little $2 payments, I'm sending $10 to a fifth as many sites. It may not be as fair but it gets more money to folks who operate the websites I like. (This is not intended as a hint but, if the urge seizes you, there should be a "tip box" somewhere on this page.)
There are a couple of transaction services that charge smaller fees (or none) but from what I can tell, they force your "tippers" to open accounts and/or to give credit card numbers to firms that are less well-established than the two mentioned above. I'm avoiding them and you probably should, as well.