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Comment by 8bithero | Hacker News Reader

I was doing some Exercism tasks the other day and then saw this so if only felt right that I make a donation. Looking at some of the comments there seems to be a number of people who have also just made a donation.

Given the state of every service becoming subscription based, I can definitely see a lot of subscription fatigue. Maybe an alternative route you could try is the annual wikipedia "We want to keep this free. Please help us buy donating". I think a lot of people appreciate the service but a lot of the times it's easy to forget that running a service like exercism can get expensive, and would be willing to donate, given a compelling enough reminder of this.

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Voluntary donations don't work. At least not for most things. The vast majority of users don't donate, and that includes the most demanding ones.

I offer a ton of free information online. I received raving feedback from people, including some that said I saved them thousands of euros. Just this week readers jokingly suggested giving me a Nobel prize or a statue. Still, donations are one percent of my revenue on a good month. They would not cover my groceries.

This is fine for me, but it's always on the back of my mind when people suggest donations as a funding method.

I'm assuming that you are talking about "All About Berlin"? (I am deliberately not linking, because you didn't, and there is probably a reason for that).

I run a number of apps and services that don't make a dime. In fact, they cost me thousands. I don't mind.

Monetization is a real pain in the ass, and I stay away from it (for these services).

I have the ability to make a lot of money, if I choose, but that's not much fun. I don't really need the money, and I like having full control of everything I do.

I am regularly approached by folks with monetization ideas. Some, are quite good. Others ... not so much ...

Maybe I 'll pursue something, eventually, but I'm in no hurry.

Thanks for your service. Looks like a great site.

I agree that monetisation is a pain. It's the least favourite part of my job because it takes focus away from providing value to my readers. I don't like putting my business hat on.

On the other hand, it allows me to work on what I love full time. This would not be possible if I relied on user donations or even public funding.

> I have the ability to make a lot of money, if I choose, but that's not much fun. I don't really need the money, and I like having full control of everything I do.

Thought of handing off some of those money-making opportunities to others, after you vet them beforehand?

I could use an alternative income stream and I am very tired of the employment grind. But I never networked and that has been biting me on the rear for the last 10-ish years.

Apologies if that's too direct. I am keenly feeling the lack of freedom and the lack of "frak you" money in the bank.

> Voluntary donations don't work. At least not for most things

In my (limited) experience they mostly don't work because the people/projects that need donations are way too coy about asking for money. Donation buttons get tucked out of sight and/or cloaked in twee language like "buy me a coffee!"

I like to point to https://archiveofourown.org as a counterexample. Hardly the most critical project in the world - it's just fanfiction - and yet they raise a few hundred thousand dollars a year in public donations (solidly surpassing their budget goals) because they run an actual, clear, focused fundraising campaign twice a year.

You are right. I'm rather coy about it too.

Personally I don't want to guilt trip my readers into donating. There are affiliate links on the website. It's a business and it works well enough to support me. It feels like double dipping.

Above all, There's a point where it operates exactly like an ad and annoys people just like one. At the moment, American tipping culture is taking over in Germany and it feels like another instance of that.

The nice middle ground would be to ask after doing something especially nice. "That tool sure saved you a lot of time. Donate?" I think that the link in my email signature works especially well because of that.

Personally, I think this approach of asking for donations is the right move for a non-profit. Subscription fatigue is real and is becoming a major problem. I am now at the point where I will go without software I would absolutely pay for one time, but because it is a subscription I refuse.

I'm sure when all is said and done, there just are not enough people like me to make a difference, but I sure hope things swing the other way. Subscriptions for everything and tips for everything are two cultural things that need to die in a fire. They are ways of squeezing more out of people, especially by taking advantage of human tendencies. It's gross and at this point I think it is unethical. Maybe not all implementations, but there are plenty that are.

You could use the time value of money formula to convert between one-time prices and subscriptions. just multiply annual price by 30 to get forever price.

So my $6 per month VPS would be about $2,000 upfront.

And a $500 game console would be a $1.50 monthly subscription. (Obviously glossing over tons of differences in say, a PS2 and a Stadia subscription)

It feels easier to ask customers for $1 per month than $360 up front... Especially since I don't know if my service will be up forever

I don’t think a perpetuity is correct in this case. Software depreciates rapidly without updates and the norm was to charge the one-time price for each major version, which was always somewhat analogous to a subscription assuming you wanted up-to-date software.

What is the math on multiplying times 30?

If pricing were consistent, I would fully agree with you. However, it is not. People will charge what they think the market can bear. When you're asking for it all up front, you can't charge a huge amount because nobody would pay it. When you mask the request by dividing it up into small chunks, people don't realize how much they are actually paying. In many cases now with automatic billing, people may not even realize they're still paying. The whole subscription thing is an exploitation of human psychology.

If pricing is too expensive the next month, then just cancel. It’s that simple. Monthly subscriptions simply give more freedom both for the user and the builder.

It's hardly annual price times 30. You must account for inflation.

This kind of thinking is why sites like this one, get into financial strain. Why do you expect to get value for free? Would you be the same kind of user who complains about ads, or a highly priced one time fee? I’m glad more products are subscription based since it filters out users who are not serious.

Subscriptions are a pain for sure, but I think a big reason for that is that they are always something like $10-20 a month. For something that people might only use occasionally that's just too much. If they were instead maybe $20 a year and easy to cancel, I think a lot of people would sign up.

Yeah that's a fair point. A modest annual fee is probably the way to go, especially since exercism is a service you dip in and out of (at least I do).

That’s around $1.5 dollars a month. No one can build something full time with that kind of pricing model. That’s more of a side income pricing model.

In my experience asking for donations generates about 1000x less money (within that exact order of magnitude) than directly asking for money up front until you get access to the product.

Yes, but they're not trying to make 1000x more, they just want enough to maintain their existing staff and servers. They're not looking for unreigned financial growth, it's a nonprofit who wants their service to be free and accessible for everyone.

Very much this. This is the gold standard for non profits. Wikipedia does it, the Internet Archive does it. And the banners are very large and intrusive during donation month. This suggests that they must be having an effect, or they wouldn't be making them quite so large! I think if I was in their shoes, this is probably what I would try. December is generally giving month.

Donation fatigue even is more real than subscription fatigue.

The only way I can see this working is a recurring donation with a low enough amount that people will just set it once and forget it.

So instead of a $1/month subscription, you could try a $1/month recurring donation.

Donation fatigue? The only time I'm prompted for donations online is Wikipedia and internet archive in December. That's about it. I can't think of any other service that asks for donations.

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