Not me. Donations are a much worse business model to me than ads. With ads, I offer free information they want, and free information about unrelated products and services they may or may not want. Either way they get something free, and I get money without owing anyone anything.
With donations, I'm offering free information, that they're really supposed to pay for, but instead of just asking for the money as an exchange, I rely on the goodness of their heart, or guilting them into feeling bad and owing me. Then they pay, but the information was already free, so they're not actually paying for it, instead they're paying for the smugness of being one of the few that actually paid what they owed, and I become the charity case in their eyes, and they are disappointed if they're not rewarded for their good deed. They expect me to do something, give them some feedback, either by personally thanking them, or posting on the website how great they are for donating. Either way, I owe them, they owe me, and it's all in this fuzzy emotional space that's outside the actual exchange of information and costs of hardware and networking.
I hate donations. I tried them once, and where I would've made $100 per day, I'd be lucky if I got $1 per day, maybe even $1 per week it was that low. Because I don't want to have a "family". I don't want charity. I refunded donations and put ads back up.
Ads are what people want. Nobody wants to pay directly, and nobody wants to be guilted and in debt. The people who donate are doing it for other purposes than paying for nothing. They want something out of it, and I don't want to give them it.
Go ahead and block ads. So what. They aren't for everyone. Then you get free information, donated to you by the people who like ads and support those who pay to advertise, and the businesses who take the risk in paying to have their name part of your site.
With donations, I'm offering free information, that they're really supposed to pay for, but instead of just asking for the money as an exchange, I rely on the goodness of their heart, or guilting them into feeling bad and owing me. Then they pay, but the information was already free, so they're not actually paying for it, instead they're paying for the smugness of being one of the few that actually paid what they owed, and I become the charity case in their eyes, and they are disappointed if they're not rewarded for their good deed. They expect me to do something, give them some feedback, either by personally thanking them, or posting on the website how great they are for donating. Either way, I owe them, they owe me, and it's all in this fuzzy emotional space that's outside the actual exchange of information and costs of hardware and networking.
I hate donations. I tried them once, and where I would've made $100 per day, I'd be lucky if I got $1 per day, maybe even $1 per week it was that low. Because I don't want to have a "family". I don't want charity. I refunded donations and put ads back up.
Ads are what people want. Nobody wants to pay directly, and nobody wants to be guilted and in debt. The people who donate are doing it for other purposes than paying for nothing. They want something out of it, and I don't want to give them it.
Go ahead and block ads. So what. They aren't for everyone. Then you get free information, donated to you by the people who like ads and support those who pay to advertise, and the businesses who take the risk in paying to have their name part of your site.
People love ads, even those who block them.