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Anecdotally, donation based "support" systems seem to be quite broken from what I've experienced. I created a free API about 5 years ago (https://macvendors.com

Anecdotally, donation based "support" systems seem to be quite broken from what I've experienced. I created a free API about 5 years ago (https://macvendors.com https://macvendors.com) and have a "Donate to Support" blurb on the site. It's been up for 5 years, gets 200K-250K unique visits to the site per month, and the API is currently handling around 300 million requests a month. Donations? I think I've received 6 over the last 5 years totalling ~$65.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
I'm thinking its like SEO - where is the donate button? How is it presented? Lots of a/b testing could be done to improve the odds.
- GFischer 10y ago
  Also, an explanation of expenses, how the money will help, etcetera. I don't have much money to donate but I've seen some very compelling donation requests which wanted me to really start donating. Patreon has also sounded very compelling to me.
imron 10y ago
Yep. Donation based systems are quite broken. A number of years back, I wrote a small utility app for typing Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks (https://www.pinyinput.net https://www.pinyinput.net) that I made available for free, with a 'Donate' button and exhortations that people could donate if they found it useful. Despite 10s of thousands of downloads over a period of about 5-6 years, I could count on two hands the number of donations I got. Then I changed it to pay what you want (including $0) with a default price of $5. And you click a purchase button rather than a download button. Plenty of people still download it for free, but now it also gets a payment every day or so - sometimes $1, sometimes $5, sometimes more, but it's a consistent trickle.
drtse4 10y ago
> the API is currently handling around 300 million requests a month. Are those number not enough to start charging for more than #k requests? Even a few bucks a year to use the service would be better than nothing.
- stanmancan 10y ago
  I've thought about it every now and then, but the additional work required to implement that outweighs any money it would bring in.
hartator 10y ago
Yeah, I am maintening a gem and after a couple of people ask me to be able to donate a bit to support the project, added gratipay. However, nobody in the end did donatate. Maybe $3 in total. Was a lost of time. I think people just think other people will donate so don't really matter. I think that too for other projects, so it makes sense.
stevekemp 10y ago
Agreed. I setup a simple site, which was soon abused. I had the choice of shutting it down, or charging money. Many people said they would pay, but when I went to the effort to clean it up, and setup stripe integration not a single one did. I nuked the spammers and shut down new subscriptions.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

I'm thinking its like SEO - where is the donate button? How is it presented? Lots of a/b testing could be done to improve the odds.

GFischer 10y ago
Also, an explanation of expenses, how the money will help, etcetera. I don't have much money to donate but I've seen some very compelling donation requests which wanted me to really start donating. Patreon has also sounded very compelling to me.

imron 10y ago

Yep. Donation based systems are quite broken. A number of years back, I wrote a small utility app for typing Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks (https://www.pinyinput.net https://www.pinyinput.net) that I made available for free, with a 'Donate' button and exhortations that people could donate if they found it useful. Despite 10s of thousands of downloads over a period of about 5-6 years, I could count on two hands the number of donations I got. Then I changed it to pay what you want (including $0) with a default price of $5. And you click a purchase button rather than a download button. Plenty of people still download it for free, but now it also gets a payment every day or so - sometimes $1, sometimes $5, sometimes more, but it's a consistent trickle.

drtse4 10y ago

> the API is currently handling around 300 million requests a month. Are those number not enough to start charging for more than #k requests? Even a few bucks a year to use the service would be better than nothing.

stanmancan 10y ago
I've thought about it every now and then, but the additional work required to implement that outweighs any money it would bring in.

hartator 10y ago

Yeah, I am maintening a gem and after a couple of people ask me to be able to donate a bit to support the project, added gratipay. However, nobody in the end did donatate. Maybe $3 in total. Was a lost of time. I think people just think other people will donate so don't really matter. I think that too for other projects, so it makes sense.

stevekemp 10y ago

Agreed. I setup a simple site, which was soon abused. I had the choice of shutting it down, or charging money. Many people said they would pay, but when I went to the effort to clean it up, and setup stripe integration not a single one did. I nuked the spammers and shut down new subscriptions.