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Ask HN: Best ways to accept donations?
So I have a page on my website that effectively provides all the information to fix a very terrible AT&T modem. Apparently AT&T themselves have internal documents pointing to my website to fix problems with their modem.
I get tons of "thanks" comments and such, so I would like to try adding a donation button to just this page. Traditionally, I think donation buttons are tacky, but it'd be very nice to effectively break even on my (cheap) hosting.
The only donate options I really know of are paypal and bitcoin. Are there other players in the field and/or things to be wary of with these two?
- djent 13y agoLitecoin is another option. https://litecoin.org/ https://litecoin.org/
- dewey 13y agoIf you want to add microdonations you could add https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/
- gummify 13y agoI know in the UK, the sites below were popular. However, they aren't a button but a site you have to set-up. http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/ http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/ http://www.justgiving.com/ http://www.justgiving.com/ http://www.paysimple.com http://www.paysimple.com http://www.wepay.com http://www.wepay.com ...and maybe Google Checkout?
- spindritf 13y agoPut up an ad for a better modem. Or maybe some Amazon affiliate link. Or compile all the info into an ebook/pdf and put a "support this site and get all the info in a printer-friendly pdf" link to some self-publishing platform. I think they usually handle payments for you. There was a project featured on HN just yesterday that allows you to sell documents stright from Dropbox/Drive[1]. Although they seem to be just using PayPal. There's also Flattr[2] for small donations to websites. But they're probably more popular in Europe. [1] https://sellboxhq.com/ https://sellboxhq.com/ [2] https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/
- chinmoy 13y agoI second the PDF option. Create a PDF of your article and sell it with Gumroad's 'pay what you want'/flexible pricing feature. You can select the minimum pricing to even $0. So, people can pay whatever they think your advice is worth. Another advantage of this is, you get to collect the email addresses of people who purchase. You can easily email them later if you update your tutorial or something.
- rounak 13y agoGumroad (https://gumroad.com https://gumroad.com) or Instamojo (instamojo.com) to sell pdfs
- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoAside from Paypal & Bitcoin... Stripe = http://viget.com/advance/accepting-donations-online-and-how-stripe-can-help http://viget.com/advance/accepting-donations-online-and-how-... Dwolla = http://help.dwolla.com/customer/portal/articles/217452-dwolla-buttons-for-your-website http://help.dwolla.com/customer/portal/articles/217452-dwoll... Flattr = http://flattr.com/ http://flattr.com/ Could you show us the page? I'm curious.
- ams6110 13y agoAlso wepay... https://www.wepay.com/payment-buttons https://www.wepay.com/payment-buttons I use their invoicing services and they are excellent. Have never tried their payment buttons though.
- cwhitaker01 13y agoWhat's the page? I want to fix my terrible AT&T modem.
- bwblabs 13y agoI guess http://earlz.net/view/2012/06/07/0026/rooting-the-nvg510-from-the-webui http://earlz.net/view/2012/06/07/0026/rooting-the-nvg510-fro...
- jpamorgan 13y agohttps://spacebox.io/ https://spacebox.io/ would be a beautiful and simple way to go. its built on top of Stripe.
- KHPatel 13y agohttp://wepay.com http://wepay.com I think they're designed specifically for this.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- iambot 13y agoI'd recommend gumroad.com [1] as a simple button to accept micro payments. [1] http://gumroad.com http://gumroad.com
- jchung 13y agoHave had a very good experience recently with givlet.
- derefr 13y agoTo try to give you a different answer than the other comments here, let's try working backward from the goal. You want money. Who has money to give in this scenario? It's not the people fixing their own modems; if they did, they'd pay someone else to fix their modem, or they'd buy a new modem, or what-have-you. You probably won't see much in donations from them, if you go that route. No, the people with really ridiculous amounts of money in this scenario are AT&T. So, next step: how can you cause AT&T to give you money? Well, what do you have that they want? They certainly might be depending on your documentation internally. They might not even know how much they make use of it (which means they have to assume the worst.) So "continued access to your documentation" can be something you can provide them in exchange for money. Conclusion: revoke access to your documentation from AT&T's IP block (or just be lazy and take down the site entirely), and send them a legal notice requesting that they purchase a license (one-time or recurring, whatever suits you) for continued use of the documentation. Hold your documentation hostage, in other words. Large companies deal with IP licensing all the time; for them, this is just one more thing to expense. For you, though, this will probably outweigh all the donations the page would ever make you. And you'll be making it from the people who made the crap modem, instead of the people who unknowingly purchased a crap modem. :)
- dave_sid 13y agoSounds interesting, but it might be an idea to install Google Analytics (or anything similar) to see if there is really significant traffic coming from AT&T in the first place before going to this trouble.