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Comment by nospecinterests | Hacker News Reader

I know they are doing this as a community service... because, I assume they feel it is their honor and duty to do so... but why the hell do these guys NOT have at least a donate link/button on their site!!!!! This is crazy. I know they are going to get awesome press which would have normally cost thousands but it never hurts to throw up a link and see how much your appreciated.

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> I assume they feel it is their honor and duty to do so

Free advertising.

Why should a commercial entity have a donate button? Why would I donate to a business?

You'd donate to a business for the same reason you'd donate to an individual: to give resources to a cause that you support and to incentivize a direction of work.

You might be surprised to learn that the business world already has tons of donation buttons and trust networks. For accounting reasons they're often called contracts.

Or crowdfunding.

or you could just buy some of what they are selling... which is really the point, the public attention and goodwill created by giving this away, leads to sales and greater revenue than would be received if they just put a donate button up.

Does anyone have any conversion stats for those donate buttons?

I don't think many people actually use them, especially if the traffic is mainly curious readers sent there by mainstream press.

Well, if word gets out they might get a decent amount of traffic from individuals who are considerably more vested than curious readers.

I've had sites with a fair amount of traffic, never received a donation, not ever, not even once. Much more effective to sell a sticker than to place a donate button. A friend of mine recently avoided my advice and replaced his twitter feed with a donate button, he said it was a horribly stupid mistake.

Maybe the legal/tax implications of a for-profit entity accepting donations outweigh the benefits? I really don't know; I'm just brainstorming possibilities.

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