[carrotsalad]

Well, I wouldn't call it a "market", exactly. But people spend money on plenty of things they don't need to. And if no one supports all the great stuff people work on and put up for free on the Web, then we'll just get more and more obnoxious advertisements and more crazy schemes from big businesses.

At TipTheWeb (see my comments above), we think that by supporting the publishers of the stuff you like online, you're helping to make the Web a place that's more valuable to you. We all want more of the good stuff and less of the crap. If you tip a blog post that you like 10 cents, then not only does the publisher of that blog make a little money, but they also get some information about which of the stuff they write is valuable to their readers. This is a feedback loop that's missing from advertisement-driven publishing, where they get the ad impression regardless of whether you like the content.