
Ask HN: How much do you earn with donations vs. ads? - tobltobs
Since earnings via ads are rapidly decreasing I am looking for other ways to monetize my websites. My experience with donations have been disappointing at earlier tests, about 0.5% earnings of income via ads. But maybe I did it wrong, or choose the wrong donation channels (I used paypal, flattr, bitocin)
Did anybody manage to get a non 	ridiculous amount via donations?
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reddavis
We went for a "pay what you want" model for my latest app. It's a real simple
utility app but we were pleasantly surprised with what people paid. I gave a
quick overview of all the numbers here [https://medium.com/@reddavis/stand-
app-9ee0fc3355c](https://medium.com/@reddavis/stand-app-9ee0fc3355c)

~~~
tobltobs
This could be an idea. Before every conversion (or daily) ask for a payment,
which could be 0. But without the possibility to make economical payments in
the 10cent area this will not work.

~~~
Mz
Some of the discussion here might interest you as well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10042368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10042368)

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corysama
I don't know their numbers, but [http://synergy-project.org/](http://synergy-
project.org/) is a good example of how to get donations.

It's a public, GPL project
[https://github.com/synergy/synergy](https://github.com/synergy/synergy) You
can either compile it yourself or you can go through the very smooth purchase
process to get a lifetime subscription to pre-compiled binary installers for
$10. It was much cheaper for me to just type in my CC# and move on with
enjoying the program than to even investigate compiling it myself.

Both Synergy and Humble Bundle do the same thing: They make going through the
checkout line a smooth, easy, natural process on the path to getting the
software. The problem with donations is not really that people are so cheap.
It's that they're so lazy. If you give them what they want up front and then
ask that they come back later to go through some awkward process to give you
money for something they already have... Well, what do you expect? It's too
late. They've moved on with their day. They can't be bothered. But, if you
make it very easy to give you money on the path to giving them the goods. Then
their appreciation and generosity doesn't require much effort. That's the key.

~~~
trestletech
+1 and I really like the idea of that model and wanted to support Synergy in
particular, but I almost gave up when I saw I'd have to compile from source,
then did give up once I started encountering errors building from source. I
would have happily given them money if they could have proven that the product
worked on my equipment first (free trial, etc.) but given that it didn't seem
to work, I bailed.

~~~
crazypyro
They purposely make it difficult and even removed documentation on building
synergy to boost sales. You can find nightlies here: [https://synergy-
project.org/nightly](https://synergy-project.org/nightly)

~~~
corysama
I don't know anything about the history of the project.

Is this the documentation you were referring to? Or, was it something else?

[https://github.com/synergy/synergy/wiki/Compiling](https://github.com/synergy/synergy/wiki/Compiling)

~~~
crazypyro
I believe there was additional information that they removed, but maybe its
all there now. That was a complaint I had read somewhere else, so I'd take
that specific one with a grain of salt. Still, I think it would be silly to
ignore the fact that the developers have a monetary incentive to making the
project hard to compile and distribute. Maybe I'm just biased, but their site
and github gives me a distinct impression that they would pretty quickly
shutdown all open source aspects of the project and completely close the
source if they legally could. They are hiring a CTO and another engineer. Why
does an open source project with this size of scope need so much money and
employees? Its clear their number one goal is to make money now, not create a
quality open source project. Combine this feeling I get with how they have
treated users and potential contributors in the past, I would dissuade anyone
from using them as a model open source project.

------
mijustin
Another avenue is _membership_. Gimlet Media is experimenting with this right
now:

[https://gimletmedia.com/join-gimlet/](https://gimletmedia.com/join-gimlet/)

Members support their company at $5 / month, or $60 / year.

The challenge with all of this, is that no one has been really able to make a
lot of money with the donation paradigm.

For example, 5by5, a hugely popular podcast site, has roughly $2,500 / month
in donations on Patreon:

[https://www.patreon.com/5by5](https://www.patreon.com/5by5)

If you look on
[https://recurrency.us/discover](https://recurrency.us/discover), you can see
how much bloggers there are making. Not much.

~~~
ohitsdom
Arstechnica is another good example of membership. If you're a paying member,
no ads. Otherwise, ads. Best of both worlds and you give your audience a
choice in how to support you.

~~~
radmuzom
If you are using ad-blockers, how does it matter if you are a paying member or
not? Am I missing something obvious?

~~~
OrwellianChild
The obvious bit is this: You are circumventing their revenue model. If you
like/want to support their content, this is not an ideal way to show that
support. Either turn off the ad-blocker or pay for membership.

~~~
tajen
Honest, lateral question: Now that I think about it, will DRM prevent the use
of ad-blockers on a majority of websites? Could this be a sweepingly major
side-effect of DRMs?

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megaman22
I've made about $25 from donations, vs about $70 from AdWords and Amazon
affiliate links, over the course of about two years. Of course, I actually got
the $25 from the donations, whereas the ad revenue is still waiting to hit the
minimum payment thresholds...

------
softwarerero
This is the monthly income for a news site with about 160 monthly articles and
143.000 monthly page views: Direct Ad Space: 170$, AdSense 50$, Sponsored
Articles: 45$, Amazon: 4$, Donations: 0$

------
stephengillie
> _My experience with donations ... about 0.5% earnings of income via ads._

So, to put it another way, you've made 200 times more (not just 200%) by
advertising than by donation? For example, if you had received $25 in
donations, then your ad revenue should be about $5,000.

df-offical has an unfortunately dead comment with some interesting and similar
numbers:

> _Ad-earnings in December 2014: $700, Affiliate Earnings: $200, Donations:
> $25._

So that would put them at $700/$25 = 28 times more (36 times more if you
include Affiliate Earnings). There's an order of magnitude difference between
your earnings:donations ratio and df-offical's ratio, but advertising income
is definitely the greater share of the two.

~~~
tobltobs
Yes, 200 times more. But that was about 3 years ago. Since then the cpm
dropped, so in the meantime and it should be closer to 100 times more.

~~~
stephengillie
How do you place your own donation ads in relation to your advertisers' ads?

~~~
tobltobs
There is just a donation point in the navigation.

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monknomo
Has anyone tried a Humble Bundle approach, where users buy the software and
have the option of entering $0? I suspect having a non-zero default payment
and a guilt-inducing average payment would encourage people to donate, while
allowing them the option to just get it for free.

I could put on my patio11 hat and say "Just charge for it"

~~~
zhte415
I've used this, as a 'buyer' (and have bought in several cases) for things
like books and detailed articles written by independent people.

One extra benefit is 'please sign up for email updates' which while in almost
all cases not mandatory, comes with text like "stay up to date" or "receive
insights".

I usually do sign-up, and this keeps the person providing these updates with
another potential customer for other stuff, and me with usually useful (as
I've self-selected as being interested) and interesting updates.

Win-win.

~~~
monknomo
That's a really good point about using a lightly locked gate as a way of
collecting interested people's email. Even in the case of a totally marketing
averse 'free as in beer and speech' open source project, an email list of
users is useful.

You could tell them about updates, new projects or terrible bugs

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pornel
Sponsorship works for me. Companies got in touch with me directly saying
they'd like to sponsor my project. I put on my project pages "This nice
company sponsors my project". I ensure that's actually a company I can
endorse, and my users aren't exposed to any nasty ad scripts.

Both donations and sponsorship pale in comparison with development/consulting
fees. When a company needs a feature they're happy to pay a proper daily rate.

~~~
tobltobs
Isn't sponsorship another name for link buying. I do get those offers but the
amount people are willing to pay is minimal. It would make more than
donations, but on the other side big G doesn't like link sellers and therefore
it is not worth the risk imho.

~~~
pornel
The link is clearly labelled and I don't accept any spammy "buy cheap meds"
links. I hope Google doesn't kill that. I think for users one vetted link is
much better than regular ads, which on software-related sites tend to be fake
download buttons leading to malware.

------
beambot
What type of website? For something with regularly-updated content, Patreon
can be pretty compelling. For example, I know several YouTubers who earn as
much via Patreon as they do from YouTube ads.

~~~
emerongi
I know YouTubers who couldn't live without Patreon. It's their only source of
income. To make a living from YT you have to have a pretty huge number of
viewers.

Fortunately, their viewers are hard-core fans and ~0.5% - 1.0% of their
subscribers donate to them. Seems little, but it's actually a lot (consider
that you have to view 1000 videos to "give" a Youtuber $1 via ads).

As a comparison: A certain Youtuber with 1.8M subscribers makes about as much
from ads as another with 300K subscribers from Patreon.

------
danneu
I've been running a forum since 2007 and Adsense was the boon that paid for my
university and made me money.

I don't think I'll ever ask for donations again. Plopping a donation button on
a website seems to do nothing but make users assume that other users must be
donating.

I've never seen donations go anywhere without active hustling/fundraising
which makes the website feel like a desperate church. Look at how much effort
Wikipedia goes through to ask for donations. And after all that work you'll
always make less than you would with ads.

Meanwhile, sticking Adsense code on a website makes you passive money that's
less annoying to your users than a donation campaign.

~~~
tobltobs
That have been my thought until yet too. However with a rapidly shrinking cpm
and a a growing adblocker usage the easy times of adsense are coming to an end
imho.

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herval
I had a guestbook/guestmap site for almost 10 years. Ads never made me more
than $200/month, whereas donations (you donate whatever you want to remove ads
from your guestmap) really picked up some times of the year (I got a $150
donation on thanksgiving, among almost $2k in random donations on the same
month - best month in the entire lifetime of the site). Ad revenue tapered off
during the years, stabilizing at under $5/month in 2013, donations averaged
$200/month until the end (average $12)

~~~
ytpete
That's not purely donations though. Paying to remove ads is more like a
freemium model IMHO, since people get something (a nicer user experience) in
exchange for their money.

~~~
herval
Indeed, it's "pay what you want". Should've been clearer.0, sorry!

------
Mz
I have always done better with donations than from ads, going back several
years. I am currently researching Patreon as a possibility for the future. I
have never had much traffic. I am working on that. My traffic is getting
steadier and, after a whole lot of thought and research, here are some things
I have done that are showing promise early on:

Post a well positioned note thanking people for supporting the site by white
listing you on ad blocker "or" via tips. Reposition your donate button as a
tip jar.

Stop using the word _donations._ Find language that signals that you are
providing something of value and they are supporting your ability to continue
making it available. So far, _tips_ is the best word I have found. I am still
doing research.

The word _donations_ makes people view you as a charity case, not someone
offering something of value who somehow needs to get paid for it.

~~~
tobltobs
Thank you, that some good inputs. I will try "support us".

------
nugget
What kinds of websites do you have? I think monetization for different
verticals is likely to diverge radically in the next few years.

~~~
tobltobs
Small online tools. No content pages, just some convert x to y or stuff like
that. The problems you can solve with those pages are too small to ask for
user registration or a fee.

~~~
briholt
Could you share what they are?

~~~
minhyeok
smallpdf.com

~~~
cJ0th
I would imagine that your service can be turned into a SaaS. For example: a
free service that allows x pages per ip address a day and a premium service
with an "unlimited" amount of conversions.

~~~
tobltobs
Because the concurrence would happily take your users if you start asking for
money.

------
jacquesm
I put up a bitcoin donations link on reocities.com a couple of years ago, so
far it paid ~$100.

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tajen
We need a patio11 person dedicated to donation-based software ;) Does it work
better if the software is open-source, but the donation is mandatory in the
original version of the binaries?

~~~
patio11
Would it be presumptuous of me to mention why that is not me? Because, in 10
years of doing this, I've seen _one_ small business do decently well with the
donation model. (It's Paint.NET. Rich asked me not to mention the numbers when
he told me them, and I respect his wishes, but let's say "A quite happy result
which supports a small team in a sustainable fashion.")

I have also seen many developers try it. Monks take a vow of poverty, because
it can be spiritually fulfilling, but I do not believe many people would take
a vow of poverty so that they can devote every waking moment to fixing the
problems of for-profit companies. (There are individual people I'm thinking of
while writing this. I won't mention their situations, for the obvious reasons,
but I'm generally a quiet restrained guy and, after a coffee date with one of
them, I nearly put my fist through a mirror out of vicarious frustration with
injustice.)

There are so, so many better business models than taking donations. Let's move
the conversation to those better models. "Charge money for goods and services"
provides plenty of room for experimentation and has the desirable property of
actually working.

