Are MAKE DONATION buttons efficient?

[Sleidia]

Hello,

If possible, I would like to have some feedback from people who have a website that let people make donations for the service to continue.

The main piece of information I need is the amount of money that can be gathered via such a method. My guess is that very few people take the opportunity to offer money for a service they use even extensively. Am I wrong?

Thank you for posting.

 

[Wullie]

Hi Sleidia,

I don't and never have run a web site of this type so the following is only my opinion on the subject.

I would think that it would depend on quite a few factors, such as:

1) How useful the site is to the person
2) Whether it is used for business or pleasure
3) What type of target market the site has
4) How many similar sites there are

This is not an exhaustive list but unless you supplied some more details about the actual type of site etc, then I can't really say any more.

Hope this helps Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.thomsonassociates.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[Sleidia]

Hello Wullie,

The site would be an "uncommon" service run by an individual willing to get the equivalent of an average salary monthly.
How popular would be the service is quite difficult to predict.

Thanks anyway.
Have a good day.

 

[cian]

Hi Sleidia,

I would guess that with an umcommon service people might be more appreciative that you can offer that service/information. However two points:

1. If it's an umcommon service will you attract enough visitors?
2. why would people donate if the service is free or they can get the same service elsewhere for free?

I guess that less that 1% of visitors would actually make a donation (pure guess). Could you get a monthly salary from it? In my opinion, not even a fraction of a monthly salary!



::

http://www.endamcg.com

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http://www.endamcg.com/finland-gaa

 

[RISTMO]

One site I know--

http://www.christianguitar.org--has

the donations thing. The site doesn't sell anything, but it has guitar tabs for over 6,000 songs, artist inerviews, music lessons, message boards, etc. It is a big site and takes a few people to keep it running, but I was very surprised that their donations thing is working as well as it is. They want $20 a year, for the donations, and I have seen a good number of people giving. A couple of comments, though...that site recently paid $650 to upgrade to a new server & it pays at least 2 individuals to keep the site running. Just because it receives donations doesn't mean that there aren't other costs to be covered before you profit. It also has over 14,000 members that use its boards.

My personal opinion--I haven't donated to any website, and don't plan to donate unless it is a VERY good service or is necessary to continue using that site. Also, I think that the lower the cost, the more likely people will support you. When Tek Tips had the support us for $250 a year (I think that's what it was) a couple months ago, I don't think they got very many offers. Even though they had over 250,000 members then, I think only a few would have donated. I think if they had made it $20, they would have gotten many times what they did (although I di\on't know how much they really got).

Rick

 

[Wullie]

Ristmo,

The $250 part that you read about tek-tips was not asking you to donate that, if memory serves me correctly it said that it currently cost around $250 to keep tek-tips running per day.

The donation option on TT has a minimum of $10, I think. You can donate any amount of money that you feel like. Personally, I think the people that use TT to run their business and only that(There are a few), should be donating to help keep it running.

Hope this helps Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.thomsonassociates.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[Wullie]

Ok, forget the part about the minimum amount, I should have read the page before I posted, there is no minimum. Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.thomsonassociates.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[Tarwn]

Just to confuse everyone further, I think the $250 was to buy one of the banners for specific forums, or it was the one to buy placement onthe frontpage, can't remember which, and could still be wrong
-Tarwn --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
For my next trick I will pull a hat out of a rabbit (if you think thats bad you should see how the pigeon feels...)

 

[Sleidia]

Thank you for the posts even if until now, although I've beens searching on the web actively, I haven't been able to get an average percentage of websites users who take the opportunity to donate money.

Also, according to me, the post about christianguitar.org is either a joke or a self-promoting post, because the numbers given by the author of the post aren't realistic at all (poor numbers of titles/artists, very low feedback, etc...)

 

[RISTMO]

Wullie--maybe I was wrong. I know that there was a $250 dollars in it, but it might not have been asking for that much.

Tarwn--I am talking about before the advertising thing which is currently going started. I think this has only been going a month or two. I may be wrong again

Sleidia
I was not joking or self promoting. I have been at that site for the last 2 years and I have seen it grow from 5,000 to over 6,000 tabs. They have tabs for almost every Christian Music Artist I have tried to get them for. Click on the link to go to the boards and you will see on the left that there are really 14,000 members. Unless you thought I meant 6,000 artist interviews, which is possible, I don't know what you find so hard to understand about my post.

Rick

 

[foxdev]

I have several e-commerce sites and a pure non-profit charity site with a "donate to us" button.

The e-commerce site gets, at best, about a 2% conversion rate (probably more like 1-1.5% on average), so only 1 or 2 people out of 100 visitors buys anything.

The charity site has had only one donation from the link, though others have donated through other means.

Since a site that sells a product only gets a 1.5% conversion rate (and that seems typical of many e-commerce sites), a site that offers nothing tangible in return for a donation would likely get much less of a conversion rate. --------------

http://www.lowcostprints.com

 

[Sleidia]

Well, the more I think about it, the more I believe everything depends on the quality of the service you can offer to people (read this:

http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,49646,00.html).

In that case, a cheap enough monthly fee is a worthable solution, compared to begging for money.

But, even if I manage to create a great e-service website that becomes popular, I'm affraid that a big company with much more resources than I have would just copy the idea, make it better than mine and would have enough money to start a mass-advertising strategy. Then, what do I do? Find a job in a supermarket?

Thanks again for the feedback.

 

[MoonHare]

One thing I have noticed about my own behavior in respect to this question is that I want to donate by snail mail and don't want to give someone my credit card number just because they have a good product/service/cause. I frequently have to track down a snail mail address to send $. It would make it more probable if I was supplied with one one without the bother of digging for it.

I noticed that one of my donees was making it seem like he was writing from a small country near the middle east, but when I tracked him down, he admitted to being in the US and didn't bother to send me his address.... I still would have sent him some money because I like his service (language lessons). So I would say that it is important to some people to be able to send cash or checks instead of credit card numbers.

I think that there are plenty of people out there like me that do contribute. Tek-tips is on my list of deserving causes (though I haven't gotten around to checking how they want their money)! Another thing is "suggested" donation amounts are good ideas.

Yours,
The Moonhare
ps. Don't any of YOU write back to me asking for donations just because I admitted to this type of behavior!!!!