For several months I had a donation button on my personal blog: Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette. I thought it was a great idea. This was before I was a member of the Triond community.
Every Triond member can get a donation button from his or her PayPal account.
Image by purpleslog via Flickr
The idea behind a donation button on your personal blog is to create a flow of free money. The readers of your blog would make a small donation to show their appreciation for the time and effort that you put into maintaining your blog.
At the time I was putting in a great amount of time and effort blogging on my own blog, putting up several posts a day. Not like now when most of my computer time is spent blogging on Triond. I use to average around 100 hits a day on the Gazette.
On every post, I asked my readers to donate $1.00 to support the Gazette. I even offered to critique and publish the stories of new writers for their $1.00 donation. I thought this was a great online marketing tool, a great money making idea.
It didn’t work.
At the time I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work. I couldn’t believe that out of 100 readers a day, five or six or seven or eight readers wouldn’t send me a lousy, stinking dollar. What a bunch tightwads.
I have no idea why they wouldn’t send me their money!
But come to think of it, I would not have sent in a dollar, either.
Of course, readers are SMART, will they send you money this way? Unless, they trust you.
yes, build reputation before getting trust readers.
I think that money is so tight that folk won’t spend $ on bloggers.
I never even considered trying for donations. Sorry it did not work for you.
Never considered it before.
Nice article and funny, I guess they would see where you are asking for a donation, and simply say in their head, I wish someone would donate to me. thanks for sharing.
hey.. different and interesting article u hav shared
CHAN LEE, money is tough to come by and to send even a dollar is some times too much to ask.
ousabe, yes I would agree that a blogger must first have a reputation recognized by thousands of readers before a small per centage of the readers would donate even a dollar.
Glynis, I think you’re right.
martie, it was a bad idea from the beginning. It only works for bloggers with thousands of loyal readers.
Marie, well I ‘m too low on the blogger’s pecking order for it to work for me. It won’t work for 95% of bloggers.
I think you were very optimistic. I’m sorry it didn’t work.
Christine
diamondpoet, that’s probably exactly what they thought.
mkd, it was an experiment that didn’t work.
Christine, looking back on it, it was a silly thing for me to do. Like I said, I wouldn’t have sent in a dollar, either.
Hey Guy you know it didn’t worked for me also!! I have donation button in blog too but just as a show! Thanks, very funny and nice to read your article,Thanks
Very true… http://www.articlespost.page.tl
Themax, I can’t blame readers for not donating a dollar. I wouln’t have donated a dollar.
Teves, I was naive to say the least.
It came to you, did it?
I guess we’ve all come to expect things for free on the internet – an idea is always worth trying though!
This is an interesting subject. A number of online newspapers are looking at ways to make people pay to view content. I believe one local newspaper in USA is doing so successfully.I often read online newspapers, but I wouldn’t pay for it, I don’t really need it.
ken, it was a silly thing for me to do.
valmnz, it was worth trying. Now I know.
Frances, the most popular business model for online content is just to surround the content with ads like Triond does.
It was worth trying.
It was a learning experience. For that, it was worth the try. That’s why I spend more time on Triond. A dollar would be easier to get here. :}
I loved the way you ended it and my fav line was – What a bunch tightwads.haha.,All of us are like that huh, you included.lol
I have a donation button on my blog too but it seems people doesn’t even care… I enjoyed reading this one thanks
I didn’t know you could get a donation button from paypal. Interesting idea, sorry it didn’t work.
Too bad, I didn’t even know we could do that!
Thanks For Sharing!
I have a donation button on my blog and some good blogger friends have donated, but the key, in my opinion, is that there needs to be a legitimate and worthwhile reason for the donation. I have been trying desparately to help keep a few renters, with young children, in their homes – I wrote an article explaining the problem and posted it on my blog. The economic disaster over the past year and half has left them with out jobs and sufficient income to pay rent. I think to just ask for free money without a good reason gets you no where. Most likely the button is just ignored. If you are interested in looking at my blog, and maybe linking up, it’s at http://wdcplace.blogspot.com.
Good article. Westbrook has a good point, I run a blog for promoting animal welfare (http://pawwblog.blogspot.com) and if I were to get donations I would want it to go to the cause.
I think a blog would still have to be bigger to turn over a few donations. 100 a day is good, but kind of curious how many are just repeat visitors every 24 hours. I tried it once too, and it didn’t work lol. So how bout you send me a $1 and I’ll send you a $1
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