How many of you are open to accepting donations as cash flow?
Hi there,
I've been thinking about a tool that helps you accept donations for your side project. Before you say it, no - it won't be similar to buymeacoffee. I think it doesn't fit the cohort of an indiehacker.
But what I would like to know is if this is something that interests you. If it does, please leave a comment below. I'd love to discuss the feature set and provide personalised mockups for your side project.
I haven't done a lot of research into donation buttons but something super simple might be interesting. one of the things that turns me off kick starter and patreon is that setting those up is a big undertaking, you have to create different offers for different pledge amounts etc. I don't think people donate a lot. Even on NPR they only get like 1% of listeners donating. But having a multi purpose send me some money button might be interesting, could be used for more than just donations, like project work etc
Hmm fair point. And yes, a multi purpose donation tool is what I'm aiming for. And somehow, make these donations accountable. The donor should know what the money is going towards and he should see it reflect in your next release.
That sounds good, if there was a way to add a payment button in the same way you can add an email form, I'd for sure add it to my personal website, wouldn't even need to have any what the money is going towards stuff.
Cool! Can you share any personal site with me? I'd love to send you a mock up of what I have in mind!
Sure thing - check my profile for my details
In my experience, having a donate button or page doesn't seem to work. :(
Why is that? What tool have you used?
I have a simple donation page with a link to PayPal - https://www.striptogether.co/donate
Over the course of a year, I've received 2 donations. It's certainly not a sustainable way to bring in revenue, and so I'll be moving to a freemium model in the next month.
Hmm. Why do you think this hasn't worked out in your favour?
Well, how often do you donate to free services you use, or even charities?
I'd like to say otherwise, but I don't donate to much at all. That seems to be the norm, and so I'm convinced that unless you're something the size of Wikipedia and explicitly position yourself as a non-profit, donations are just not viable.
People don't want to donate simply because they enjoy your service. I think that you need to offer additional value to actually get them to enter those credit card details, and if that's the case, it just makes sense to offer simple upgrades or premium membership. Little additional cost to the service, but enough to give something more in return for your User's hard earned cash.
True. I don't find myself donating to free tools that much. But then again they don't necessarily promote their donate button as much paid tier products promote their pricing page. I will surely make a donation if I constantly use a product and if they somehow integrate the request for donation in the userflow.
Not really. If I wanted to crowd source funding in that way I’d use kick starter, patreon or even crowd cube.
I'm not talking about "funding" a project. I'm talking about accepting small trickle donations that keeps the lights on for your side project.
Like Patreon then?
Like Patreon but executed differently :)