Donate Button?

I'm wondering whether to use one of these on my blog as I can't seem to make money any other way.

Thoughts?

 

What are you doing now?

 

Google ads, Amazon, and an aff. link to a site that sells "green gadgets".

My traffic is about 50-100 uniques a day, and I make about $0.01 on a good day.

 

Donate buttons will convert even worse.

I'm guessing it's the blog in your signature? Seems to me like it's lacking a specific niche. Which is why you can't do much for earnings.

 

Why should others give you money?

 

I give away a free e-book.

 

It's not really free, then, now is it?

 

It doesn't hurt anything to put a donate button on your blog, you can just put a button and a little note above it, "if you like this blog and would like to contribute to it's upkeep"

I have given money through a donate button on numerous occasions. I even sent a message to one blog owner telling her she should ad one to her site - you never know when someone will be moved to donate -

 

DONATE button hardly gets any attention in my honest opinion. Try selling something

 

Strange all the negative responses. Surely it's worth a try?

 

Please give me some more information, what do you want to say about Donate Button?

 

i dont see a problem with adding a donate button. i know lots of popular blogs and podcasts that have a donate button up. nothing wrong with pitching in a dollar to say thanks. you leave a tip to someone who serves you food, why not to someone who serves you content.

 

Stu - from what I could see you don't have any adsense ads on the page until way down the bottom and it's a 468X15.

Put a 468 X 60 near the top and one just past the page fold.

You will get better conversions that way.

 

I do see that you already added one but wanted to comment on the button for anyone else who is thinking about doing the same type of thing.

My question would be "Why not add a donate button?" It takes a few minutes even with limited programming knowledge, could make you some money, and I personally see no reason not to. I agree with your post further down, "Strange all the negative responses. Surely it's worth a try?".

As for your problem of not making money (assuming the blog in the sig is the one you are referring to):

1. Get Adsense more visible and have users able to view it without having to scroll down.
2. If you are already using Amazon.com for ads, create an aStore and promote it throughout your blog. Mention (and link to) an item in the store at the end of every post you make, with a short explanation on why you chose it for your store (targeted towards your expected readers: eco-friendly, made of natural bio-degradable stuff, shaves armpit hair well, etc).
3. Info Product 101: Make sure you monetize free eBooks. If you are giving an informational product away for free, require newsletter signup to get it, stuff it with referral links, promote your aStore from it, do anything and everything you can think of to squeeze some cash from it. (I didn't read through your eBook before posting this but assume that you skipped this step if you don't feel you are making money)
4. After getting that newsletter list growing, use it to encourage return traffic, notifying subscribers of your new posts to boost traffic and adsense revenue, new amazing products in your aStore to boost traffic there and hopefully some extra sales, and to directly promote other affiliate products that you "recommend" to them (such as Earth4Energy or whatever that top CB "green" product is right now).
5. If you already created a free eBook, work on creating a bigger one that has a price tag. If you do this however, you will likely want to take some time to look into promoting it outside of just your blogger blog. Spend time doing the things above first.

 

donate buttons never worked for me. The key to making consistent income is in creating unique products in your niche. Create ebooks, audio CDs and other products in your niche...

If you do this...you will begin making more money. When I started selling ebooks I immediately doubled my income...and now make much more in selling my products than in either affiliates or google adsense.

Donate buttons ain't gonna work...One thing you might try to do is take your free ebook...and then when someone signs up for it...immediately give them a OTO offer that is a printout of hte book in comb binding. At the end of the day, as someone noted, you will probably make even less from donations than from adsense...

 

That's what I call good sugestion.

 

In this particular situation, shouldn't it actually be called the mooch button?

 

Test it and see. It will only work if you have an extremely dedicated reader base.

 

And you have bleeding-heart morons.

Hey, you will make money!

Maybe I'll take advantage of the idiots too!

Hey, Stu, can I mooch, er, I mean, borrow your donate button for awhile?

 

Copper12 please don't reply to any of my posts again.