Michael Parekh added the new TypePad tip jar feature to his blog and explains what he is going to do with it:

My experience with the online ads bear this out, with the revenues to date over the past few months being enough for a couple of visits to Starbucks. And yet, I’m implementing the Tip jar on this side along side the contextual ads. The motivation is not the money but the experiment of what people do when these types of features are introduced. Specifically, I’m curious if the tip jar can surpass the revenue generated by the paid search ads, at least on this site. All money from this blog will go to charity.

Some might remember my TypePad can’t leave comments on my own TypePad blog adventure which was resolved over Christmas time last year. I didn’t keep that TypePad blog running very long, mostly because I didn’t like the way 6A imposed it’s third party anti-spam tools on its paying subscribers, namely rel=nofollow. If I want nofollow disabled on my TypePad blog then that should be an option for me. I am paying them, I should have the choice for how my blog is configured including how to deal with what I feel is spam or not spam on my blog.

It wasn’t a choice, of course, at least at the time and that is primarily why I voted with my feet.

And is this system really working to defeat spammers anyway? As recent as September 3 I found this:

So I checked out the archives on Seth Godin’s blog and found that trackback spammers have found a way to start filling his blog with pharmaceutical and gambling links from trackbacks - without getting the links hit by Typepad’s automated use of “nofollow” in trackbacks.

For those who missed the whole nofollow debacle, in short it’s a few of the search engine vendor’s way of not following any link marked with rel=”nofollow” inside the link (a href) HTML tag. Fundamentially it is a vote for unimportance. There is a Firefox Extension and CSS hack out there that will highlight any link on a page that has nofollow associated with it and if you visit any TypePad blog with that enabled you’ll see it being used.

To recap, here is where and why I specifically disagree with TypePad’s (and any other blog vendor who forces this on their blog owners with no ability to opt-out) decision on nofollow.

Not every blog or trackback is spam nor a non-authority on something, in fact some comments and trackbacks are actually better than the blog content. Owners, CEOs, authors, product managers and other people in the know read this blog. That’s not boasting, that’s a fact. Their input on why something I’ve written about their product and/or service is every bit as valuable, if not more valuable than mine. And if they point to a resource, identify a solution, correct a misstatement — either from their own business blog, personal blog, company website, etc — which provides more information then the search engine should follow that link. Nofollow promotes selfishness, link whoring and elitism, it doesn’t only demote spam.

All those false positives crying in the rain.

I want to reward those who have something good to say and if I used a TypePad blog, I wouldn’t be able to do so on this front, outside of making a special blog entry highlighting their comment/trackback. In the publishing area, of course, there nofollow is optionally allowed. It’s only in the comment/trackback area that this 6A didn’t give the option.

And since the blogger/author chose TypePad as his publishing practice, isn’t he just a little bit to blame for this circumstance? IMO, yes, he is. Forgive my use of the male pronoun, I definitely mean he, she or they, in the case of a group blog choosing TypePad as their publishing platform.

For those bloggers reading this using TypePad, please contact 6A and ask them — no, demand — that they make that rel=’nofollow’ a blogger-defined option for your blogs. If it already is an option and I’m talking out of my ass here — remember, I’m no longer a customer of theirs so I can’t check this out without paying them again (and I’m not going to do that just to verify this) — then please use my comments and correct me on this. And if you leave your link to your blog, your voice of authority will not be stripped of any SE value.

You help us, we help you.

In fact, the only way I can ever see this blog using rel=nofollow in the trackback/comments area is by accident. And by accident I mean we upload a new/changed version of the blog software and nofollow creeps back in by default or breaks the plugin code we are using to programatically strip nofollow out. That actually happened with one of our recent updates here and no readers called me on it.

In the future if anybody ever sees the nofollow in use at Hmm — and I haven’t written post saying I’ve changed my mind on this (which coul happen, I suppose) — then please notify me ASAP and I will fix it. I don’t want that in use here. Especially if the information is valuable, I want the search engines to follow the links of commenters and trackbackers. That makes the web a better place and hopefully will improve the search engine results for everyone.

Now back to this tip jar thing, which in Michael’s case he is running a curious experiement. I’ve seen others do something similar but haven’t found out the results, so I hope he reports back his findings rather than keeping them to himself.

Me? I’ve not had much success with the tip jar, though admittedly I’ve only used it in one case in the past. Not here on this blog, but one of our other websites (not a blog). And we did a lousy job of marketing, if you will, the tip jar. I guess there was just something that felt … wrong about the tip jar. Running ads, paid subscriptions, those both seem to me like legitimate forms of making money on the web. Tip jars seem like they, well, cheapen a site. Please don’t anybody get derailed here, that’s not universal condemnation of tip jars or those who choose to employ them.

I wonder if many people see a tip jar and start thinking street vendor or street beggar. Are people, generally speaking, made uncomfortable by begging? What do you think? I would say it’s a risky move trying to beg one’s way into any sort of reliable income stream, but I know a few bloggers have been successful doing so. More power to them.

• No Google juice for nofollow attribute, will this negatively impact legitimate comment activity?
• Debating what is/isn’t spam in comments sections
• Trackbacks now inline, mixed with comments
• Digg clone spotted: Wobble
• Google responds to my nofollow concerns
• Comments and Trackback Policy