The archive · Small Business & Money · Product decision · 2020–2021
Shortcut Menu Bar adds a zero-fee Ko-Fi tip link and receives its first $5 donation
After 10k+ downloads, a free VS Code extension's maker embeds a 0%-fee Ko-Fi donate link in its description - and gets the first $5.
Shortcut Menu Bar
What it had to solve
Shortcut Menu Bar began in 2016 because VS Code - unlike IntelliJ, Eclipse or Notepad++ - let users customize almost everything except the buttons on the top bar. By 2020 the free extension had passed 10,000 downloads with multiple 5-star ratings, but no way for users to say thanks.
How it works
Gourav Goyal started Shortcut Menu Bar in 2016 after noticing that VS Code - unlike IntelliJ, Eclipse, Visual Studio or Notepad++ - let users customize almost everything except the buttons at the top of the editor. He learned TypeScript from the extension docs, built buttons for common commands like save and format, and by 2020 the free extension had passed 10,000 downloads with multiple 5-star ratings. He guessed he was not the only 'mouse-guy' out there.
Out of Covid boredom he decided to add a donate button 'to see what happens'. Comparing platforms, Buy Me a Coffee and Patreon each charged a 5% fee, PayPal's UI was clunky, and Ko-Fi charged 0% with a clean interface - so he opened a free Ko-Fi account, linked PayPal, created a donate link and added it to the extension description. Someone soon sent $5; to him the transaction meant a user had made an effort to say the tool was useful.
He published the story on his blog on 2020-12-11 as a nudge to the FOSS community: the whole industry runs on free-time maintainers. Update #1 noted the post had hit the Hacker News front page - the thread drew 404 points and 106 comments on 2021-01-12 - and that many developers replied with their own first-donation stories. Update #2 reported $45 in donations so far.
Why it lands
- The ask lives inside the product listing, so it reaches exactly the people who just decided the tool is useful - no separate audience or campaign needed.
- Platform fees decide whether small tips survive: Buy Me a Coffee and Patreon each took 5%, while Ko-Fi took 0%, and at $5 the difference is the whole point.
- A tip is a transaction rather than a like: making a real payment is a stronger signal of value, which is why the first $5 mattered more than the 10k downloads.
- The write-up converted a micro-outcome into shared content - on Hacker News it sparked dozens of maintainers telling their own first-donation stories.
- The experiment was cheap and reversible - a free account, one link and a description edit - so the low downside made the test worth running.
What it did
Someone sent $5, which the author read as a real signal that the tool mattered; an update later reported $45 in total. The write-up hit the Hacker News front page on 2021-01-12 with 404 points and 106 comments, where many developers shared their own first-donation stories.
What you can take
Put the tip jar where the user already is: a zero-fee donate link in a free tool's description turns gratitude into transactions - and publishing the first $5 made it a story thousands shared.
Since then
The blog post stayed the project's centerpiece: Update #1 reported the Hacker News front page on 2021-01-12 and a wave of developers sharing their own first-donation stories, and Update #2 put donations at $45. Shortcut Menu Bar remained free and open source. The episode became a small, frequently retold example of putting a low-friction tip jar inside a free tool rather than charging for it.
Sources
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