donation buttons

I'm sure you have seen the buttons or maybe read the requests, where bloggers ask for donations on their blogs. I am not clear why people like to donate money but i can summarise it to be to benefit themselves by gaining knowledge or value.

Nowadays with blogging so popular theres vast sources to gain your knowledge from and its free most of the time too, oh but remember these a lot of rubbish out there too. I regularly read the content from my fellow bloggers in my blogroll and gain great value from them and yet none ask for donations.

But there is some exceptions to this, with a few well written requests around that are done almost tongue in cheek and with a sense of humour. Just one example would be Rhys's blog The Gospel According To Rhys. After this blog update you will see a small beer icon behind with the followign words.

If you've enjoyed this, why not buy me a beer? If you haven't, why not contribute to my death by alcohol poisoning by buying me a beer?

. He does this well cause he writes in a manor that suits this type of donation, therefore the character of the person is very important when blogging.

Probably the most famous guy for donations was a guy called Jason Kottle who started this blog kottke in 1998 but went full time in 2005 to become professional blogger who raked in $39,000 form donations in a year, ok he had a good following from his blog before he came a full time blogger but thats not bad money. An interesting interview can be found at this link.

Of course there are exceptions to all things , one that i think is great is The attempted bomb attack at Glasgow Airport and a guy called John Smeaton ( a can hear many saying who? if your from the Uk you will know, if not click here Hes the guy who tackled one of the terrorists, so for appreciation theres a campaign to buy John 1000 beers at a local hotel near the airport, now the total is upto 1400 pints at 3 pounds plus a go thats a lot of money.

Donations should only be given to people who add real value to a blog who's respected and liked or done in a fun way and not to any newbie who writes a blog.