If you want to see how you can hide your name and remain anonymous as either a creator or supporter on Buy Me A Coffee, I’ve researched this and will show you how in this article.
Buy Me A Coffee can be anonymous for both creators and supporters that do not want to show their names. Creators need to set up a different name on their profile and payment provider accounts while supporters just need to leave the ‘Name’ and ‘E-mail’ fields blank when making a payment.
Although it is easy to remain anonymous as a creator by setting a custom Buy Me A Coffee profile name, it takes a bit more work to make sure that your name and email address does not show up on bank statements for transactions.
To learn more about how you can remain anonymous as a creator or supporter on Buy Me A Coffee, simply keep on reading, my friend. 🙂
How To Not Show Your Name As A Buy Me A Coffee Creator
If you would like to have your actual name hidden as a creator using Buy Me A Coffee, this is definitely doable if you know how to set things up correctly.
Creators can choose any name to appear on their public Buy Me A Coffee profile and will not have their email address given out for any reason.
With that said, actual names and email addresses will still appear on the bank statements of transactions.
To get around this:
It is possible to create a different email address and name for your Paypal account or choose a different ‘Business Name’ for your Stripe account to remain anonymous as a creator.
The workaround of choosing a custom public profile name and using a custom name and email address for payment provider accounts can actually be used to anonymously collect donations from most membership and donation platforms.
Here are some comparisons of other platforms that you may want to consider looking into:
- Ko-Fi vs Buy Me A Coffee
- Buy Me A Coffee Vs Patreon
- Patreon Vs YouTube Memberships
- Patreon Alternatives
- Patreon Vs Substack
Next, we will take a look at how you can remain anonymous as a supporter so that the creator does not see your name.
How To Not Show Your Name As A Buy Me A Coffee Supporter
It is also possible to hide your name when you are supporting a creator that is using Buy Me A Coffee to accept donations.
Supporters can choose to be anonymous by leaving the ‘Name’ and ‘E-mail’ fields blank while making a payment. Anonymous support like this will show the supporter’s name as “Someone”.
Anonymous support was a feature that was requested in March 2020 and was completed in November 2021:
What Does Getting Paid Look Like With Buy Me A Coffee?
Buy Me A Coffee’s pricing is simple:
There is only 1 Buy Me A Coffee plan available which takes 5% and payment processing fees off of any income you generate on Buy Me A Coffee.
Just like with most Patreon alternatives, it is free to create a Buy Me A Coffee account and you only give a cut to them when you are actually making money.
Once someone donates to you on Buy Me A Coffee, you instantly get paid with a direct transfer to your Stripe or bank account.
The amount you get paid will be the donation amount minus Buy Me A Coffee’s 5% fee and any payment processing or banking fees which are usually another 3%.
How Does Buy Me A Coffee Work?
At the heart of it, Buy Me A Coffee allows you a simple way for your supporters to more directly support you with one-off donations or recurring memberships.
Buy Me A Coffee works by allowing your audience to support you through donations, tips, or a recurring membership by sending them to a hosted webpage or embedding a button on your website.
However, the key to making Buy Me A Coffee work for you is to first build an audience and community around your art or creative endeavor.
Without an audience that wants to support you, there will be no one to donate or tip you in the first place.
To learn more about how Buy Me A Coffee works and how you can make it work for you, check out this article: How Does Buy Me A Coffee Work? 🙂
Buy Me A Coffee Fees & Pricing Explained
Although Buy Me A Coffee is free to sign up for and get started, any creator planning on using Buy Me A Coffee will need to pay a 5% transaction fee and any payment processing fees for anything that you earn on Buy Me A Coffee.
The fees to use Buy Me A Coffee can be easily divided into 2 categories:
- Buy Me A Coffee’s Transaction Fees: a 5% cut of anything you earn on Buy Me A Coffee that is to be paid to Buy Me A Coffee
- Payment Processing Fees: a 2.9% cut and $0.30 flat rate for each transaction that is paid to Buy Me A Coffee’s payment provider which is Stripe
Since there is no monthly fee to use Buy Me A Coffee, you never have to pay these fees directly and instead will have these fees automatically deducted from any transaction you make on Buy Me A Coffee.
To learn more about how Buy Me A Coffee’s fees work in detail, check out this article on Buy Me A Coffee Fees. 🙂
How To Get More Supporters & An Audience That Supports Your Art
The key to making Buy Me A Coffee work for you is to first build an audience and community around your art or creative endeavor.
Without an audience that wants to support you:
There will be no one to donate or tip you in the first place.
So regardless of what donation platform you use, you will need to have an audience that actually wants to support you if you want to make money on either platform.
The best way to get Buy Me A Coffee supporters is to first build an audience and community around your art or creative endeavor off of Buy Me A Coffee and to freely provide that audience and community with overwhelming value.
The important words here are “freely” and “overwhelming value”, and the best way to provide this to your audience is with a solid recurring content strategy.
Remember that Buy Me A Coffee (and most donation platforms in general) don’t have any discovery features so they won’t bring in new fans.
Instead, they simply allow your current fans the opportunity to choose to support you financially.
Although I wrote the following article using Patreon as an example, this article will show you how you can get paying supporters on any platform by growing an audience and community: How To Get Patreon Supporters. 🙂
This then perfectly ties into the next step which is adapting your content plan so that your paying supporters will want to continue to support you overtime…
How To Keep Your Supporters Coming Back By Building A Content Plan
If supporters don’t feel like they are getting any use out of your membership because you aren’t posting enough or aren’t posting things that they enjoy, it is no secret that they will eventually stop paying for it.
The best way to build a successful membership program is to consistently release new content by combining a recurring content strategy with a content calendar.
Recurring content allows you to build your audience, optimize your membership tiers, and make sure your supporters keep coming back for more.
To learn how you can start publishing regular content that builds your audience and keeps your supporters happy without completely stressing you out, check out my article called Patreon Content: Ultimate Guide To Ideas & What To Post. 🙂
The above article also uses Patreon as an example, but can definitely be applied to any membership or donation platform!
