Putting a Donate button on your forum

[NationTalk]

I recently read that some forums make a decent go of it just through donations! All you need is one wealthy benefactor who likes your site I guess. Anyway, I just put a PayPal donation button on the bottom of my site and am hoping for the best. Any other experiences with donation buttons out there?

 

[JLogan]

I've had some people donate to my projects in the past. It wasn't a bunch of money, but every cent counts.

 

[wasi90lk]

If your forum is useful to your members, I think you can get lots of donations.

Putting a donation button on your forum is not a bad idea.

 

[xpl0iter]

I recently read that some forums make a decent go of it just through donations! All you need is one wealthy benefactor who likes your site I guess. Anyway, I just put a PayPal donation button on the bottom of my site and am hoping for the best. Any other experiences with donation buttons out there?

I have had a time when the donations would sum up to 200USD per month. That donation button was on tubedown.net which I sold a few years ago!

 

[Jason1]

I have it in my forum, but haven't got any donation till now..

 

[Jerlene]

I've gotten donations but nothing to boast about, maybe $10-$20 at most.

 

[Miss K.]

I'd consider having one, but I wouldn't want to make a huge deal about it unless it was possible to offer unique perks for donators. I'd feel a bit guilty otherwise!

 

[Jordan]

Ya, you would actually be surprised sometimes with the people who donate.

I'd consider having one, but I wouldn't want to make a huge deal about it unless it was possible to offer unique perks for donators. I'd feel a bit guilty otherwise!

That is when the "Premium" subscription comes in

 

[Rihtar]

I had donation buttons on several of my projects and they worked out fine, the project received some bonus money that kept it alive for a little longer until it was closed down

 

[Cal]

I've done donate buttons before. It works alright if you have a good stable community that's active. If your community is small and there's really not much to offer it comes off as pandering. I actually have had more success in offering premium usergroups rather a donation button. You probably wont get enough donations to break even on your server bills either way.

 

[Creaky]

I wouldn't put a donate button up until the site had a good membership base, even then I would probably offer user group upgrades instead.

 

[Beverly]

A long time back, I was member on another forum where the owner claimed to be getting around $300 a month from donations by his members. He made a huge deal about how none of the money went into his own pocket and how he always poured money back into the community. And, I have no idea what he was doing with the money, just know it was always active and updated. I wish I knew his secret for getting so many donations. All I know is that most of the people on the forum were his real life buddies so they were most likely supporting his little forum hobby with cash donations. For sure, it wasn't about the perks he was offering. So maybe this was more about friends helping friends out. So I guess forum donation buttons work.

 

[Jamie1]

I don't think I've ever had a donation before! The only time I've received any money is with a premium membership where the user gets something in return.

 

[Jordan]

I don't think I've ever had a donation before! The only time I've received any money is with a premium membership where the user gets something in return.

I'm not the type of guy to count premium subscriptions as a donation either xD Members are paying something to get some goodies.

Perhaps if you had the option users would be more inclined to do so.

 

[Matthew Morgan]

Donation boxes do not always work.
And they can make users not want to sign up to your forum.

 

[Pizza Webhosting]

I've not had any success with donations yet. There was a time I had all the intentions of putting up a gaming server but had some copyright issues with some of the source files, and couldn't go through with the project. Similar projects were completely supported with donations, so it is possible. Just offer perks for donations.