I have never revealed how much I earned from donations to my main website, mount-kinabalu-borneo.com. It has been running for the past 2 years, when I received my first donation on September 16, 2006 from a visitor from Thailand, Kamolwan Chongsrichan.
Since then, the website has been self paid by the donation money, i.e. I don’t have to fork out my own money to pay for its hosting. The webhosting fee is RM254 per year with Exabytes.
Do you want to know how much I earned on average for that 2 years time? Okay, let me just thank these 73 people who have donated their money to the website. I also put their name on the first page of mount-kinabalu-borneo.com, as their name deserve to be there:
- Robert Nash
- Maria Szymczyk
- (Chinese name character which I could not find the translation)
- Susan Falconer
- Asmah Yassin
- John-Paul Cusack
- BRUNO LE BRIERE
- GUO DONG
- William Baird
Cleve Rynehart- Siti Khadijah Jaaffar
- Julian Bode
- Luke Falvey
- Ally Spiers
- Zoe Gapper
- Rhys Arkins
- Becky Sundling
- Pang Sheue Fong
- Sarah Bte Aly Shun
- Mikko Manninen
- Mae Foon Wong
- Jan Kristian Rasmussen
- Jenny Dalrymple
- Fong Vins
- Young Catherine
- Adam Zubairi
- Matthew Leverett
- Bill Cohen
- Norman Brown
- Emy Castro
- Christoph Theisinger
- Scott McKinney
- Juneta Ideriyan
- Bob Pressey
- Norul Maslissa Ahmad
- Naveen Peter
- Mazlan Mastan
- Christoph Garditz
- Charles Warner
- Lily Lam
- Ainul Khalidah Idura
- Rob de Groot
- Gillian Anderson
- Simone Lehmann
- Francis Seynaeve
- Ian Vickridge
- Ismail bin Md Yatim
- Klaas Bart de Raad
- Sarah Hucker
- Adam Helman
- Bob Packard
- Robert Woodwall
- Kevin Christie
- Ng Alan
- Magnus Bertilsson
- Vince Jenkins
- Pik Kei Yuen
- John Simpson
- Anne Piyared Puthikarun
- Yong Chen Hui
- David Pieribone
- Guy Smeets
- Grant Knisely
- Jeevan Prasad Chandriah
- Anh Minh Le
- Mak Kai Kin
- Marilou Tan
- Keith Grunow
- Tan Suan Bee
- Gerd Islei
- Ismail Muaharan
- Kamolwan Chongsrichan
- Terence Neo
Lets calculate together:
(a) Minimum donation for the PDF copy of the ebook is USD7. It means; USD7x73=USD511 for 2 years.
(b) For 1 year, the donations would be USD511/2=USD255.50 (around RM860 per year)
(c) On average per month, USD255.50/12=USD21.29, i.e. or about 3 donors per month.
Although on average visitors donate USD7, there are donors who donate USD10 and USD15. In one special occasion, Adam Helman donated USD300!!!
What was the secret that they want to donate their hard earn money?
Provide them ‘value’ for their donation. Putting a donation button with “Please donate for my Nikon D40 fund” is not a good move as it sounds self-centered. That sentence shows that the potential donors will not earn anything by donating. If you look closely, it’s a win-loose situation.
But if you provide value to the donors like for example a PDF copy of the website that I give out without the ads, easy reading and printability, donors will want to donate, as they will get something for their donations. It’s a win-win situation.
Try doing that to your website and blogs. You may be surprise that there are people out there who are looking for something that you have, in which, you may give it with a small donations.