Buy me a coffee?

3 min readFeb 19, 2022

Something interesting happened last week.

My extension crossed 30,000 users and I updated my chrome extension with a small button called “Buy me a Coffee” last week.

This was a very innocent attempt to ask my users to donate any amount that they wish if they like the product and it creates value for them.

To be honest, I didn’t expect a single penny to come my way but wanted to try this as an interesting experiment to understand user behavior and psychology.

Then, a few days back while casually surfing my phone, I received an email saying “𝑹𝒐𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒕 𝑵 𝑵𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂 𝒄𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒆”, first I couldn’t understand the context but then quickly realized that someone actually “Bought me a coffee” for my product.

It was a small payment of $5, my first income in dollars, but to me, it was a huge amount. Purely because someone saw value in something I created and paid me without I even selling it and the best part was the message that came along, it reads like this:

“𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴. 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥’𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭. 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥’𝘴 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭.”

I was moved.

I have developed large-scale tech products, with complex functionalities, great features, and whatnot but somehow this small product which took just 3 hours to build has just exploded purely organically.

Probably because the users that use it know the innocent intent behind its creation and understand that I am not selling anything.

What followed this was 2 more payments from different people and I couldn’t be happier.

The product seems to be doing good and is growing organically. Hoping to run some more interesting experiments to understand the user psychology behind using products & tools.

Let’s see where it takes me.

Here are some screenshots of the progress so far.