This guy has a somewhat popular webcomic and he often sells his art on ebay for decent amounts. I get that people need stuff in life but his request for donations is not attached to a life crisis or similar scenario. It’s basicially “I need a car, please give me money to buy one”.
Is this a reasonable request? His webcomics are enjoyed by many at no cost to the viewer. I can see that selling drawings on ebay would have limited cash flow potential, but going directly to the viewing public and saying “I need this consumer good please get it for me” is kind of different.
Hey, if he wants to ask, he can. And people are free to contribute if they want. No skin off my nose. I don’t understand what “reasonable” means in this case…the only people who can decide if it’s reasonable are the people who might or might not contribute. I don’t see an objective criterion for deciding that.
There have been quite a few webcomic artists who have asked for and received considerable amounts of money from their readership. Randy Milholland of Something Positive made the offer quite a few years ago to do the comic fulltime if readers contributed enough income to him to quit his “real-world” job and they did. Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick just had a massively successful kickstarter campaign that brought in something like 10 times the original goal.
He’s asking for donations on a site you wouldn’t be at if he charged a subscription to access. And if he did require a subscription, in which you’d be happy to pay in return for the entertainment, then he’d be taking your cash and spending some of it on a car.
Likewise if he just asked for donations.
So, he’s just being more direct about it. Makes sense to me.
He was honest about why he wants the money. At least he isn’t doing some con and pretending he has some serious illness or whatever.
Probably fair to ask for a couple bucks donation if you like his work (never heard of him) and he is pretty much doing it for free for the fans.
Besides, doesn’t hurt to ask. Worst case scenario is he only gets $36 and can maybe take a taxi once. Best case scenario, he can buy his car and nobody minds donating a couple bucks to an artist.
I think if he needed a car bad enough he could find a side job and save up money rather than doing the internet equivalent of standing on the median holding a cardboard sign.
I just paid off my car and amazingly didnt have to resort to begging people on the internet to pay for it just so I could do my job. People can do whatever they want, but I personally dont feel like asking for donations is showing a lot of dignity.
How about the internet equivalent of busking? He’s drawing a webcomic, which means he’s giving value for, basically, free. He’s asking for people who read and like that webcomic to throw some change into his virtual guitar case.
His side job is drawing the webcomic. He’s asking fans of his *work *to donate.
I think the analogy of a busker is spot on. I knew one guy who would always say donations were for a specific thing (rent / girlfriend’s birthday etc) - he said it gave people an excuse to give more because they saw it as an earned payment rather than charity. He got more from busking than ‘paid’ gigs most often. But it’s hard work for no guaranteed income.
I, too am paying for my car from my main income stream. I am setting up a writer’s blog where you bet I’ll be asking for donations from people who like my work.
My main income stream is a non-profit that relies on donations and we’re being told to find more creative fundraising avenues, so I guess this isn’t a jump for me. ‘Begging’ on the internet is reality for both my organisation and many that I work with.
I agree with the responders who say that it’s legit and not undignified for a webcomic artist to solicit contributions from those who enjoy their work, just as it would be equally legit for them to earn money by selling the comics.
However, this commercial Dodge Dart “registry” that this artist is using is an absolute smeller, etiquette-wise. It’s basically the automotive equivalent of a Tupperware party, where a manufacturer is recruiting volunteers to shill for their product on the chance that their friends, families and other well-wishers will fork out enough cash for them to get something free. (In this case, though, the well-wishers aren’t even getting overpriced kitchenware in return for their donation.)
I cheerfully donate to help support webcomic artists whose work I enjoy, but I’m not participating in any “Dodge Dart Registry”. Collect your politely-solicited contributions and spend them on whatever you want, including whatever make of car you prefer, but please don’t drag Dodge’s tacky viral marketing campaign into it.
Its not asking “friends and family”(which would indeed be tacky) in this case though, its readers of his webcomic. Using personal relationships to hock other peoples wares is certainly gauche, but doing so to the readership of your website/newspaper/magazine/whatever is basically just advertising, and has been accepted practice more or less forever.
Well, not really. Selling ad space on your website/whatever to allow some manufacturer to hawk their own wares to your readers is one thing, and you’re right that it’s customary and generally accepted.
But putting a personal appeal right smack in the middle of your front page, explicitly and individually requesting your readers to participate in this manufacturer’s sales campaign as a direct favor to you (and with a big-ass picture of the manufacturer’s product all over the page, no less), crosses the line into “volunteer shill” territory.
Nitpick: It’s certainly up to each individual to decide what they consider appropriate for them to do in such a situation. However, the criterion of “proper”, as in “polite” or “customary” or “in accordance with etiquette”, is not determined by individual choice, but refers to conventions of behavior recognized by society at large.
Individuals are certainly free to do many things that are widely considered socially improper, but that doesn’t make it “proper” to do them.
(Cue the howls of protest from various clueless posters who naively consider it a sign of independent thinking and free-spiritedness to be offended at the very idea of the existence of societal standards of etiquette applied to the behavior of individuals. :rolleyes: Not directed at you personally, Chronos, just trying to head off the usual generic anti-etiquette hijack.)
Doesn’t seem any different then asking people to click on Amazon links or to buy audiobooks through their podcasts (About half the podcasts on the planet are funded by Audible.com using more or less this method). Those are usually done with a personal appeal.
And even before the web, personal appeals to shop with an advertiser are hardly new (radio ads have taken this form for more then a century).
But in anycase, the reason I think of things like Tubberwear parties and the like as being tacky is because they rely on leveraging personal relationships to sell stuff for a third party. That isn’t what’s happening here, whether the appeal is “smack dab in the middle of your front page” or not doesn’t really bother me.
It was just a ‘share our link and win stuff’. Since I use Avast and usually do recommend it to friends, I shared their link. No-one (or not enough) joined and I got nothing. I still use and recommend Avast to friends.
I love Paul’s art. He has a wishlist over at Amazon and I donate regularly (well, as often as I can afford to) in order to support his work… and do so as well with other web artists whose work I enjoy. This by purchasing his artwork directly, getting things from his wish list, or contributing to efforts like this.
I see nothing wrong with this at all. Paul has a huge fan base, and he puts his artwork out on the web for free. This is a way for fans to say thanks in a more tangible way.
