Folks with Donation-based websites

What works/doesn't work for you?

[JollyK]

I have a website that makes most of what funding it does off of donations. This isn't exactly business or marketing oriented, so I wasn't sure where to put the question, but I was wondering if other people whose sites are volunteer efforts funded by donations, tips, contributions, etc, would like to discuss what works and doesn't for you?

For example, do you have any other payment systems than Paypal? Like Amazon honor system, C2it, Yahoo PayDirect, others? Does one work better than another, or does it vary?

Have you noticed whether people who request the most support donate or not? ("Not" in my case -- the most vocal and time-consuming users seem to be the ones who never donate, while others who I never hear from at all send money.)

As a "business model," how does the donation thing work for you?

Anyone but me silly enough to run a free donation-based website? :-)

JK

[Webwork]

Whether they intend it or not, aren't most sites essentially non-profit?

What's the subject matter of your site?

Post a reply here but sticky me too. I'm a bit busy.

[JollyK]

Whether they intend it or not, aren't most sites essentially non-profit?

Haha! You said it! Gads, I'd like to add that to my random quote file. :-)

What's the subject matter of your site?

Free software. General purpose web apps (CGI, PHP, JavaScript) with some tutorials and so forth. That kind of thing. There are probably about a bazillion similar sites out there, and I've seen a lot of them with various donations links to Paypal and other places. Kind of wondering how that works out for people, and if you've tried different ways of presenting the links, different payment services, blah blah. :-)

JK