In the past month I have received roughly 100 € ($130) in donations. I am running a much smaller site, Volafile.io, with maybe 200-500 daily users (most stay o

In the past month I have received roughly 100 € ($130) in donations. I am running a much smaller site, Volafile.io, with maybe 200-500 daily users (most stay over a period of a few hours). I decided against ads and instead decided to support the site with donations. One hundred euro cover my expenses for about two and a half month. (I also give 10% to the EFF) I assume that for most people the main reason to donate is because they feel the site is providing value to them. Value they can actively experience. In return for their generosity I don't impose any limits on them. You can upload any amount of files without limits, download as much as you want, without countdowns or the like and you don't even need to register. Reminding users of the value you're providing is key to getting them to support your project. And this is where he made the biggest mistakes: - He put donation button at the top of the articles If the user hasn't read your article, you didn't provide anything valuable to him yet. Place it at the bottom. - He put the donation there without any explanation What do you need the donations for? Are you some cooperation trying to squeeze a few extra-bucks or just some poor guy trying to keep his website afloat? - The donation button is just slapped on the page It not only looks like he didn't spend more than a few minutes integrating it on the page, it almost looks sketchy. Guide users through an additional page telling them what you'll do with their money in a few sentences. And I didn't even see his bitcoin donation button at first because it's on the opposite to the much more visibly placed paypal donation button. Even more so if you are using NoScript. Those are just my few cents. I don't know if they'll help him if he's going to stop supporting his page with donations, but they should at least be of some use to someone else.