The importance of a ‘Donate’ button
Ajith | Apr 2009 | Blogging Tips, Make Money Online
Majority of the income or money generated from a blog usually comes via programs such as Google AdSense, private ad sales and affiliate/referral channels. The other mechanisms are content creation related activities such as writing paid reviews, writing or commenting elsewhere.
There are some blogs that generate money also via sponsorships, donations etc. When it comes to sponsorships, usually the sponsors expect additional favors such as continuously promoting their services. Also, to avoid conflict of interest, one big sponsor might usually want to ‘own’ you and your blog for a blocked period of time. (Blog) donation, on the other hand, is more like a mechanism to appreciate the work done by the blogger, content creator or the plugin-theme-site developer and the income generated via this is relatively small.
Why a ‘Donate’ or ‘Support this blog’ link is not a bad idea?
Though the income generated via donations is usually insignificant and sporadic in most cases, it can really boost the morale and motivation levels of the author(s). I do not have a ‘Donate’ button on this blog but I had one on my Contact Commenters Plugin admin panel. Two weeks ago, a good soul sprung a pleasant surprise for me by donating some money for the plugin! It is not that I make living out of this blog or plugin development, but such surprises are a major motivation factor and I have already started working on couple of other plugins. Those who do a lot of online writing and open source software development, the donation potential could be much higher and it is not necessarily a bad idea to put ‘donate or support’ links (It’s not begging!)
How to put ‘Donate’ links on your blog?
The Donate links can appear anywhere where you think you are adding value to your audience. Plugin admin pages, eBooks, software about pages, blog, newsletters etc are some places where the donate link can appear. The following are some of the mechanisms to accept donations on your blog (and otherwise)
#1 PayPal Donations Plugin
The PayPal donations plugin is a simple plugin that can be integrated to your WordPress blog pages or posts. It can also provide basic statistics on the donations received and also link back to the donors’ sites.
#2 Buy me a Beer Plugin
Ankesh’s Buy me a Beer plugin is an excellent plugin for displaying the ‘Buy me a Beer’ link at the end of each post so that those who benefited from the posts could donate directly. I had tried this plugin sometime ago just to experiment with it. I really liked this concept, though I could not agree to the concept of ‘suggesting the donation amount’.
#3 Create PayPal donate button or links for yourself
If you don’t want to go for plugins, you could still create a donate button/link by logging on to your PayPal account. All that you need to do is to click the ‘Merchant Services‘ and then ‘Donations‘. You could create a button with the default settings (or change default amount, currency etc) and click the ‘Create Button’ option to get the HTML code or the simple link that you could paste on your blog or elsewhere.
What’s your take?
I would like to know if any of you have used the donate buttons, plugins or links on your blog or elsewhere. If so, have your received any donation so far? Do you think it is okay (and ethical) to display the donate buttons for the free services that you provide?
Happy Blogging!
I agree, a donate button is a great idea. Often readers want to reward a blogger for their hard work or money saving ideas, and the donate button is the perfect way to do it.
I created my own – linked to PayPal and put it in my nav bar. I can happily say I’ve gotten a few donations since I started blogging. WooHoo!
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post… Does An Ugly Blog(ger) Stand A Chance?
Ajith,
One should place a donate only if he is proving something exclusively free like themes or useful plugin.
But it seems to be people mis using by placing everywhere. Anyway no one wants to donate unnecessarily
TechZoomIn’s last blog post… 3 Simple Steps to Launch Your Blog’s Mobile Version for Free!
Good information. Personally I think that is just to make clear that the services are free. But, it’s just a matter of “want” to make a contribution like a recompensation for the effort or for help the cause or the topic of a specific blog.
Timely – I’ve been considering doing this recently. I agree and disagree with the previous comment. It’s true that it makes more sense for something tangible like a theme or a plugin but I know that some of my articles have helped people do things for themselves rather than having to pay for someone to do the coding for them.
I still haven’t decided though.
Kim Woodbridge’s last blog post… My 5 Favorite Articles That I’ve Written This Year
A reader might donate for blogger’s hard work.. Nice idea to add a donate button.
I may or may not be in the minority here but I have very striong feeling on this subject.
I too have donated to such things as plugin authors and the like, but no, “donation” buttons do not belong anywhere anyhow at anytime on a business type blog plastered with ads.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post… Business Mentors, Advisers & Coaches
I have donate button my Password Dragon, which is a free password manager software.
I don’t have donate on my The Geek Stuff blog. I’m not thinking about putting one either. There are other ways to make money on blog other than donate button. For e.g. Sell your eBook etc.
Ramesh Natarajan’s last blog post… 7 Examples to Manage Linux Password Expiration and Aging Using chage
I have never tried this plugin. Does it really fetch money for blogs ?
Harish | Blogging Kid’s last blog post… 5 Things That Indicate A Successful Blog And Blogger
Its always a good idea to use donation plugin, because sometime you help people unknowingly.
And they don’t mind helping you with few dollars .
I have seen donate button in couple of blogs. But the idea of putting this in a post is ok, but not for the blog completely. It’s because the donation for a post clearly gives an idea of the post leading to the donation and as pointed out here raises the morale of the blogger
@Barbara, I agree with you Barbara. Sometimes, it’s a great way to appreciate your efforts especially when there’re no other intrusive income generators such as ads on a blog.
@Lax, as I mentioned in the above comment, if the users are provided with plain good content (and not ads) there’s nothing wrong in putting a ‘Donate’ button. But it may be ridiculous if somebody has a lot of ads, even popups and want to accept donations further.
@H’woodcasino, Got your point… Yes, sometimes to push a cause further – e.g. certain open source idea – one (or those who buy that idea) may contribute as well.
@Kim, absolutely… If somebody has been struggling with a technical or software problem and one of our posts has been extremely helpful to him in sorting out the same, why not donate? If he had taken professional help, probably that would have cost him $100 or $200. So it’s just not for plugins, themes and coded software alone.
@Yoginder, agreed. I must add for ‘useful and consumable’ content.
@Dennis, thank you for your views. You may be right. On business and professional blogs, it may be redundant as anyhow they may be generating huge income even otherwise.
@Ramesh, yep.. it’s a personal choice. In fact, there are bigger moneymakers out there for blog. But somebody like Barbara, who doesn’t sell things or stuff advertisements on her blog, may have a donate button
which is absolutely acceptable I think.
@Harish, I do not know if the plugins as such will fetch in money. I think it also depends on the readership and how a particular post or tip really helped someone.
@Harsh, exactly… It’s all about how useful the content is.
@John, yes, it would be great if we know which particular post helped people and hence is making money. This probably is the idea behind Buy me a beer plugin.
I never tried putting donate link. May be i should put donate links on cricket links posts. May be somebody who is happy for the links might donate 1$
Nihar’s last blog post… Download Kaspersky Anti Virus 2010 Beta 9.0.0.313 & Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 Beta
Dnate button is a great idea, and thanks for the nice information how to set it up using paypal.
Ruchi’s last blog post… Some Qualities of a Successful Leader
I think this works when someone is providing some free software or some themes or plugin. I had it on my blog for sometime but it was not a success.
@Nihar, go for it man… you never know the potential until you try it
@Ruchi, you are welcome
@Madhur, it’s just not for free software/plugins. Sometimes great coding/blogging tips can fetch you money as well. Yes, in this part of the world we generally do not donate for any service that comes free
I really like the “buy me a beer” button, which can be tweaked a bit to read “buy me a coffee / lunch / etc”
If you offer value, and dont really have a solid monetization plan, this might well be the ideal plan to help you cover a little bit of the expenses.
Before some months. I add the donate button to my site, But after two month, There is no one donate, hehe!
So I remove the donate button now. I think if you blog really have more helpfull things, The reader could donate you!
Web About Theme´s last blog post… TimeCafe News – Premium Magazine Style WordPress Theme
i also would like to add “donate” button to my free medical transcription button. Thanks for this idea.
Hi Ajith,
I am wondering how we can add a donate button as an Indian resident now that PayPal has changed their rules for India? I don’t see any donate button option in my PayPal account.
Thanks!
@Arjun, I just replied to your mail. PayPal has taken out the button creation code from ‘Merchant Services’ but the features still works. You have to get the button creation code from any WordPress plugin admin area or websites that have put up Donate buttons and change the PayPal email address therein.
Yes.. it is good, but we cannot rely on it .
nice post
I think the value of what we provide is up to the reader, since a plugin or software may not be used by everyone but sometimes words can change lives. Having another option is always a good idea, I don’t see a down-side to having one.
Such a wonderful idea! But when I checked with paypal, there is a note there saying that when you have a premiere account, your primary email will still be shown in the tag. I’m still getting confused with html. Does this mean that spammers can see that? Your reply is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
@SittieCates, you are right. If you check the html source from the browser, you can see the PayPal email address. Not sure if there’s a work around to fix the same.