I often run into this orange “Donate” button when I’m troubleshooting technical IT stuff and google my way to a solution. There are a lot of bloggers out there who shares their knowledge and findings, and most of them have this button that allows us visitors to donate through PayPal.
But of course, this is not restricted to the IT community, but you see it on blogs in general, where people share knowledge and stuff.
Personally, since I almost always spend so little time on any one site I happen to land at, it really never occurs to me to give money to the person who wrote it.
But does it work? Do people throw in a few dollars here and there while surfing the net and finding good stuff?
And if some bloggers actually get money out of the donation button, aside from say a couple of dollars twice a year – what do they do that makes people actually give them money, that the rest does not? (Aside of obvious answers, like, “something good”.)
Note that I’m not talking about a site that has a supporting community, but those trillions of “My Blog” sites out there, kept up by one enthusiastic person.
Of course, this question may not have factual answers, but rather anecdotal, but I’m sure the good mods forgive me and move the thread if that turns out to be the case.
I don’t have a factual answer to the question (sorry) but it’s very easy to add a PayPal button to a site - so the question may well become “why NOT add it?”
If it takes a couple of hours to get working, then once you sink that cost for your time, it’s an opportunity for people to give you free money.
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I’ve donated on a couple of occasions on technical blogs where the article went directly to the root of the (urgent and critical) problem I was troubleshooting - specifically, in cases where advice from other sources was not much use.
That’s a nice thing to do, Mangetout. I get a bad conscience now. Really, I have had my butt saved several times thanks to a random blogger.
Is it a fairly common practice, I wonder? What do you guys think? Perhaps you have one of them blogs yourself, that have the occasional mangetout dropping by?
It wasn’t a blog, exactly, but I did have a website for years where I self-published writing with a Paypal button attached. Yes, I did get a little money from it. Not a huge amount, but putting the button on the site was trivially easy.
I’ve donated for reasons sort of opposite: where it turns out that maybe the info is not one of the the be-all and end-all answers, but I keep coming back because of the blogger’s consistency and organization. I feel like a houseguest who raids the refrigerator too often.
(For further general reflection see the umpteenth ATMB thread on SD membership fees.
Which raise questions on “blog” versus other web presences and their maintenance.)
Yes. Some of it previously published, some appearing on the site first.
I’ll send you the web address via PM because, since there is a donation button, I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that here without prior mod approval. I haven’t updated the site for a few years, but it’s still there. All links to the stories still active.
The donation button is on the home page, you may need to scroll down to see the blue banner with it near the bottom.
I actually started the website back in 1996! - I just realized it’s 20 years old! I was actively updating until 2010.
While I couldn’t name them today, I know of plenty popular Internet people who had Paypal links on their text-based sites. But now those are more likely to use something like Patreon. Paypal is more for people who don’t do regular content.