A good way to get donations.

[Bernard Lama]

Donation buttons generally only work under three circumstances:

1. You are not obviously making money from the content of your website in any other way.

2. The stuff you do is of high-quality, above and beyond the norm.

3. You don't promote the existence of the button. (Actually, this DOES work, but it also creates negative backlash, similar to YouTube artists saying "please rate my video 5 stars".)

Guys your opinion please...................

[Bernard Lama]

Great....probably most of them are dedicated and real members.

[Trish White]

Bon,

I have been wondering how to in put this button on my site and if it was worth it. I pay for my web site myself . I have almost 900 artists on board. I opened a paypal account in the web site name but I don't know a thing about how to use it on the site.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Trish

[Trish White]

thanks Bon,

But do I still have to pay NING $19.95 a month to do this, or is this part of my Pay Pal services?

[Strumelia]

Yep, as I described in my other post here- I do exactly the same thing.  I keep track of the donations and my members come through kindly if there is any extra need at the last minute.

[Trish White]

Hi Bon,

What do I do if I have used all my text boxes on my Main Page? I have 6 in use, and when I go back to features page I don't see any extras?? Can I just add it into another used text box?

Thanks,

Trish

[Debby de Wilde]

You can always add it to one of your text boxes that are already in use. Just keep some space in between the text and the button. 

[Trish White]

oooh, that would be great! I am going to try that before I try Bon's suggestion to remove one of my used boxes - I would love to keep what I have now.

What I don;t understand is why is NING charging $19.95 a month for paypal usage if all we have to do is download it ourselves. I am very confused by this?

[John Bizley]

Hi Trish, I thought that myself until I looked into it a little. Nings is more for subscriptions and for paying to get into certain areas of you site. Pay Pal is great for the donations but not intergrated for the other aspects of your site for example blocking access to a page unless a payment has been made to view the content of it.

[Trish White]

aaah, thank you for that clarification John.

[Debby de Wilde]

Trish, I don't think Ning charges us for Paypal usage. 

I put the donate button in both the left and the right sidebar. The left one since it is your first view on the main page and the right one because it stays on no matter what page you visit. 

If you want to add the button as a tab there's a good tutorial HERE

And if you want to add the button to one of your text boxes HERE's a how-to

[Trish White]

ooh, good Debby,

I am going to print out the info today and study it - and see if I can work this out - I am trying to peddle so fast to keep up with all this - and sometimes I just look at my screen and say, "whaaaaaaaaa"

[Debby de Wilde]

That is awesome!