Donations

Cierra

Cierra

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I see more and more forums now a days accepting donations rather than running advertisements/premium memberships/upgrades/etc... Or running them alongside each other.

How do you feel about accepting donations on your forum or visiting a forum that is collecting donations? If you accept donations on your forum, how well has it worked for you, and what do you use the money for? If you do not, would you ever start collecting them? Why or why not?

Here is an example:

http://screenshot.co/125fc690fb
 
I run ads on Open Carnage, but they make just a few dollars per month because I only have them shown to guests.

I run the site very largely out-of-pocket, but have raised over a thousand dollars in donations from the community. I offer donors of $20 or more almost all the permissions that our "Regulars" get, as well as badge of recognition, all of which has no expiration.
 
I'm twisted on this. On one hand, I do kinda feel bad about taking money from people, even if they are perfectly fine with donating. It just feels weird to me. On the other hand, I'm one of the people that hates advertisements. In the rare event I watch TV, I'll turn off my TV or just mute it and walk away in order to avoid commercials. I sympathize with people who hate ads and don't want to subject their members to things they'll never click on.

It's a double edge sword. Either accept donations in order to pay for the expenses, or plaster ads.
 
Donations can work pretty well, but only if you have an active member base, I guess. The same applies to advertisements, too, though. 😛 I personally like to display ads, and allow people to buy an upgrade to remove them.
 
My forum accepts donations as a member upgrade. You can contribute to the site and have a contributor banner linked to your avatar. I had a lot of people asking to donate toward the site so I added it.

I have used the money exclusively for the site. I spend so much money on the site that there isn't really any other use for it lol. I also think it would be really horrible to not spend the cash on the site they are supporting.
 
I personally do not have any issues with asking for donations for running a forum, since I would hate to be the one forking out a thousand or more a year (alone), to keep the forum running.

Running donations or Premium Membership will help with any of the overall cost in running the hosting and anything else needed.
 
When I had a forum I never thought of asking donations since I did it for fun. I couldn't think of spending money or taking money related to it. I could see how it's helpful for big, active sites, where they need fees to run many things and members enjoy the features so it doesn't hurt to send some of their money to the websites. As long as the purpose of the money is clear and members get to feel the effect or rewards of having their money donated, I think it's good to go.
 
I do accept donations and I've actually had quite a few people donate, and a couple people donated quite a lot of money too. I have a donator group for those who donate at least $5 but most of the people in it have actually donated more than that. 🙂
 
We accept donations, run adsense and also run viglink. Can't rely on one revenue source because if donations stop coming in, then you're not making any money. Always remember, never keep all your eggs in one basket and always spread things out, so that you have more than one revenue source.
 
cpvr said:
We accept donations, run adsense and also run viglink. Can't rely on one revenue source because if donations stop coming in, then you're not making any money. Always remember, never keep all your eggs in one basket and always spread things out, so that you have more than one revenue source.
Click to expand...

Oh, is Viglink annoying for your members? know a lot of people don't like it because they don't want random links added to their post that they haven't added themselves. 😛
 
Cierra said:
cpvr said:
We accept donations, run adsense and also run viglink. Can't rely on one revenue source because if donations stop coming in, then you're not making any money. Always remember, never keep all your eggs in one basket and always spread things out, so that you have more than one revenue source.
Click to expand...

Oh, is Viglink annoying for your members? know a lot of people don't like it because they don't want random links added to their post that they haven't added themselves. 😛
Click to expand...
I haven't received any complaints about it, so I couldn't honestly tell you. We run it for guests only.
 
I think donations could work well but you will need a large memberbase who is willing to contribute to the forum. I think it would be quite nice if you place advertisement on your forum and ask for donations but donators can have ads removed.
 
I don't mind if another forum is accepting donations but I personally don't do this. I'd rather run ads.
 
I don't promote donations or even encourage/ask for them, but if a member wants to help out and donate something, I'm not going to say no to money. 😛
 
I'm lucky enough to have a free VPS as a reward from a hosting company I help out with support, so I don't really have any costs other then my domain for running my forum (and other sites).

I'll probably set up some donation option eventually though to gain some extras from it, plan is to use my forum for support for themes I manage to make up and release, if I ever get to that (have one released wordpress theme a few years back so not impossible I suppose). Donors would in that case for instance get access to download all .psd files and/or help customizing the theme beyond regular support.
 
Currently I have no donation nor paid membership status available, nor do I run ads of any sort. The costs are still under three figures annually, so there's no need to.

But should the time come when running the show would actually cost something noticeable, the way to do that could be via affiliate sales and/or paid memberships. I see no reason for donations.
 
I don't see an issue with accepting donations from people, as long as I know that I won't just give up later on or become inactive in the near future.

However I only see donations working with a large member base, when the forum has created a reputation of itself and shows to be reliable.

I'd rather run ads, however with Ad-Block on everyone's browser now-a-days, donations would probably generate more income. 😛
 
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