I always thought it was stupid that a site who paid money for their host would put banners/ads on their pages. Normally that was why you would buy a host in the first place: to get rid of banner ads or ads in general. Having had a host now for a few years, I can understand why you would think about doing it. It depends on your bandwidth and load in general. Gaia, for example, has millions of users and a shitload of servers. Paying for that would indeed be a bitch, out of pocket, considering all staff there does NOT get paid... for that reason, actually. It
would be dumb to pay people to work for you on a forum when you don't get paid to run it in the first place.
In comes Donations to a website.
I have always agreed that donations were a great idea and kept unwanted ads away from users as well as kept you from redoing your whole layout to allow for those stupid ads...
Here's the thing, though:
No one wants to pay for anything they don't have to and that they don't deem worthy enough for monetary sacrifice.
Everyone wants to get something in return for spending their money. That's just human nature. I've always felt bad that I never had anything to offer for donations to my site in general. I still don't think I have anything worth giving out for donations given in. To buy things monthly to ship out to people costs more money than my host itself does. Anything from the $1 store would still be equal in amount and you can get some great shit from that store that's not actually "cheapo". But the shipping of that one dollar item ranges anywhere from $5 to $25 dollars and would put most people more in debt than they started out in. That reverts back to wallpapers, character art, and general drawings given for FREE on the net. (Free as in no shipping required in exchange for a monetary contribution to the artist.) These can also be called "Commissions". It's still something I don't feel comfortable enough in my art yet to offer. I can't offer free dolls or anything like that as I use bases from other sites and one very big rule in the Dolling Community is that if you use someone ELSE'S bases, you do NOT make money off the doll or finished piece you made from them. (Many allow 'selling' them on sites such as Gaia or Furry Paws (or even here) so long as the only 'money' you make is "forum currency"... Such as if I sold dolls of your characters to you and you paid me in points or ZZ... not US Dollars through PayPal.)
Next income is generated through Affiliates such as AnimeNation and Bravenet Affiliation Programs. (I am a member of both.
You can find them on my site's Donation page under Affiliate Links. Click this sentence to go there and see what I mean.) Thing is, again, no one wants to buy anything even that way. (If people did, I'd have a check from AnimeNation already. X_X; ) Yes, I only get an 8% commission on everything sold once people click my link, but... If enough people bought their anime and manga and associated goodies through my link, I'd have more money. 8% of a $30 sale is $2.40. Using that example, it would take about 11 purchases before I got a check. My problem with Affiliate Links isn't even so much that little issue, but the fact that there are about a billion people who are members of AnimeNation's Affiliate Program and most people already have a place they can go to click through and buy something... or they just go to AnimeNation.Com themselves and buy things. Those are the ones that frustrate me as an Affiliate. If you're gong to buy something ANYWAY, why not help someone else out? In THAT situation, there are indeed billions of people with links. Pick someone and help 'em out. Doesn't cost you any extra to do that, your bill will be the same as it woujld normally be anyway.
I try so hard not to be selfish. I donate to sites I frequent because I understand how hard it is to get and keep money to pay for your website. It takes real money to keep a site going. But this is why I know people will donate and sometimes donate MORE when they get something in return for their cash. I donate to Gaia every month for letters/goodies. I donate to Furry Paws once a year to keep my status as an Elite Account. But I've also donated to REO once or twice and I've donated to a few other places I went to that gave me nothing in return. I didn't cry about it and I didn't say they needed to add incentives to donate. I'd like to believe that there are people out there that are unselfish and don't feel the need to have gratification via items and goodies but would rather help a site they go to often to stay online. Even those who run their own servers from home and do not pay a service to host their website still have to pay for DSL or phonelines, electricity to keep the computer/server up and running, and sometimes parts or software to maintain the server. That's more expensive, but also can be a great idea. If we could do it, Mike would set up a server to run my website here... then content could not be blocked by my host provider and space would not be an issue. Just would mean adding a HD. But my site does not generate any income and I would not want to charge people to just ENTER my site as Mike would probably want. he thinks I should charge people now, but I can't morally do that and my Mom agrees with my POV. So we ignore him... however, she does agree that if we ever did host my site from home, I should find a way to make sure I have something come in every month to help the costs of the DSL line use, electricity bill, and parts necessary to run the independant server.
Again, though... I have nothing anyone wants except some place to go... and even that isn't enough incentive to actually pay for it. It's not a fun site everyone has to go see and be on like Gaia... Likewise, it's not a place that you can get things from... again, like Gaia.
This is not to say I've never EVER gotten a donation... Cam has sent me money once or twice and so as Erik. Course, they've also sent me presents a few times. *^^* Graham (some of you remember Akurei...?) also used to send gifts and money to help pay for my server. Ki used to give me change here and there when I was paying for her host before she moved in with me to go to college at Bradley with me. But income is few and far between.
Finally, there's opening a store, such as 99dogs.com or CafePress. I've had both. Nothing EVER sold no matter what I put in there. No one wanted crap I came up with even when it was rather neat. I even had a DDT Store, but Cam; at the time; didn't think we should do it. I have since convinced him we could since it's selling OUR work, not Digimon items. It's our characters and our artwork for our game. It is not part of the Digimon Genre as a whole. In fact, DDT is only BASED on the ideas and concepts from Digimon itself, but it's evolved far beyond that single idea and has become something new in an of itself. But that's another discussion altogether. Still... this whole store idea also referencing the problems with both affiliate links, and the fact that no one seems to want to buy anything. Everyone has a store now thanks to the two main sites I named previously... and it's hard to make yours unique enough that people want things from you instead of the guy next door. You also have the issue with minimjum pricing; I'll use CafePress since they're a more recent store of mine. I don't WANT to charge $25 for a little logo T-Shirt, but to make any kind of profit, you almost have to. Minimum pricing is like $16, so to up that to anything that's worth actually selling it... between $20 and $25 will get you some income on that item. I understand you're using them to print your crap on shirts, hats, mugs, mousepads, clocks... whatever... But I think some of the minimum prices make it hard for you to actually do well when selling. You'd almost have to
guarantee that your crap would sell like hotcakes to price it at just barely above minimum in order to then get a check later from the site. You can't do that as you never know what will wind up being a "hot item" until it sells as such later.
I understand the concept of Supply and Demand very well. If everyone has one, they don't want another one. If no one has one, and it's a wantable item or something everyone HAS to have, everyone will get one. People also want something that will last them for a long time, but that means they will only ever need/want ONE of them adn once they have it, they will have no desire to buy more than one of them... meaning you'd almost HAVE to design something that broke down after a long-term use in order to guarantee they would come get another one. Thing is, if it goes too fast, it's shitty work and they won't want another one of the same thing. I will say I did buy a shirt for myself through 99Dogs once. It was for my website. It lasted me quite a few years. It now resides with Graham, I think... I forget who I gave it to when it started to wear out. They wanted it, don't get me wrong. They asked if they could have it and I said sure.
And so are the laws of the cyber jungle and life... And so ends my rant.
I feel better.
Or bitter. Whichever works right now.
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