More generally, there seems to be an entire class of apps out there that could be really useful, but which are really hard to monetize with subscriptions and/or ads revenue alone. Think about an advanced file converter, or maybe a one-off fax service. There are also the more traditional use cases, such as purchasing a single article from an online journal, or streaming a single movie online.
Minno provides an effective alternative to monetize these services, and it does so with much more ease than with traditional payment systems.
We'll definitely let users with <$10 "cash out" their earnings eventually, but we're still working out the details. After all, we just built this over the weekend =P
But your right--we could make this more clear on the site. We'll also be sure to keep HN Posted as we add more features to the product!
I'm the co-founder of a startup called Minno (https://www.minno.co), which is a new take on micropayments. We were inspired by Sahil's work on Gumroad last weekend (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614), so this weekend, we decided to whip together a little link/file sharing service of our own.
You can check out the finished (alpha) version of the product here: http://hawtcakes.com/
My co-founder and I worked on it from 10am to 3am on Saturday, 1pm to 3am on Sunday, and a little more this morning. It doesn't look quite as nice as Gumroad, but we can pretty it up later :)