PayPal donation experiences

[Mike Bell]

I recently got a site running, and accidentally wound up with quite a bit more traffic than I expected because of a google listing, as well as quite a bit more space usage. I'm fixing to put up a paypal donation button because I know I'll exhaust my account once my member-base has a few more weeks of growth.

What are your experiences as far as how friendly people are with their donations? Any of you guys ever been in a situation like this? Thanks...

Mike

[Silverbug]

Depends lot with the user base, and people that visit the site. If you have a loyal member base then you will probably have more luck, rather than random one off ppl.

[Two Roads Media]

My partner has a PayPal donation link and it works great. Now, his site is VERY large, but he has already paid for the rest of the year through the donations and it continues to grow.

[Silverbug]

out of curiosity whats the link? Also Mike have you got a link to your site too?

[Mike Bell]

Two roads... I'd be curious too My site is still undergoing lots of work... but... I didn't expect so much so fast. Perhaps my sclae is off 'cause I've never had a real popular site... but http://www.myonlineimages.com

[bigdave]

Pretty cool site Mike!! I'd just be careful that people don't upload images that are against the TOS!

[Mike Bell]

I know it's inevitable, and I'm trying to figure out a way to deal with that. I know it would suck for them for me to have to moderate all of the images before they are "live". I was thinking about putting up a disclaimer for anything copyrighted since I won't have a clue on lots of them. As far as if they upload anything that's not... well... pg-13... I was thinking a checkbox on the upload screen so I know.. and keeping them stored elsewhere. I know the rules @ Vortech are strict... and I realllly don't want to lose my account. Ideas or suggestions are welcome.

[maytricks]

If you provide a good service to your users and they are comfortable at your site, the donations will follow. I have a few sites with 500-2000 members each, and whenever I ask for donations they have no problems. Though most of the users who donate are 3-5 year members. I often use a ploy like you get a chance to win something with every donation over a certain $$ amount. Usually you get enough to cover the need for the donation and the extra prize.

[generic]

mike, thats a nice thing to provide to people, but you better protect yourself at as minimum capturing user info, ip addresses etc.

I dont mean to be negative, but you will ultimately be responsible for the photos hosted on your site so best to be carefull. If you have no safeguards, moderated signups, etc, its only a matter of time before people start using it for bad things, porn, child porn, spam email images, etc.

getting sued for storing copyrighted images or worse, is defiitely not fun and a big waste of time and money.

getting arrested for having other images is worse.

dont get me wrong, i think its a nice idea, but you better cover yourself.