encouraging donations

[tweakbench]

so, i've been trying to think of ways to encourage donations on the tweakbench site.. to help subsidize the massive bandwidth costs it uses. but i obviously need to offer something to add some value. so i've been wondering, what types of things would be worthy of a donation?

my primary idea is to offer a "download all" link directly to donators.

another option would be to offer a collections of manuals, or maybe 'tweakbench pro' versions, with additional presets, and extras.. like CC map PDF's etc.

what do you all think?

what extra things would be worth, $2,$5,$10?

[jittered]

To be honest, i'm willing to pay for your plugins you know. Manuals and CC maps and stuff won't make people give you money, because in the end they get all the real goodies for free. I'm not sure how jackdark pulls it off, but i'm under the impression that many of his plugins (esp. the novuzeit stuff) has sold quite well so far. I'm mainly interested in fx (because I've got the synth area well covered with the AAS stuff) and I sure would pay something like 20, 25$ for the plugins I find usefull and maybe you could offer bundles with reduced prices. Then offering a new special "buyers plugin" would make sense... Oh well, that's only my opinion of course...

Keep up the fantastic work.

Domien

[boorch]

i think it's good to be free, not all people have paypal accounts or shop over the net etc. i think you can have additional mirrors from friends, people would host your files for free on their host..

[tweakbench]

Yes.. donations imply that they are not necessary. But.. tweakbench does cost me a fair amount of money.. both from actual services purchased, and time spent. So donations are encourage. If you dont have paypal, or any extra cash, or are just plain old cheap. That won't stop you from getting or using my software.

[sisforawesome]

about how much bandwidth do you use per month? i could possibly provide a mirror for them.

[Benedict]

I thought long and hard on this issue (and have followed the J Dark saga) and came to the opinion that there is only one way to ensure an acceptable donation rate: let ppl have the product only after donating a minimum prescribed amount (they will almost never donate above this).

This may mean you have a few less users but you will have cashflow. Of course your product has to be worth the min donation (and I've never used anything of yours so I have no opinion here) - oh heck I'll call it price - or your users will disappear.

If you want to do this as a 'love thing' then let that be enough. Love and income don't mix (why else won't hookers kiss). Anything else will just bring you grief.

My parents run a free web site for writers etc and the moment they charged $1 they would have 0 readers. Right now they are a very successful site because its for the love of it and no more or less.

[tweakbench]

well.. tweakbench will always be free.. it's just everyone's dream to be able to not work so much, and spend more time doing what they're passionate about.

the donations i get from tweakbench help cover costs, buy some books, re-donate back to 3rd party module developers, and ultimately buy some of my time - since i don't need to take on more freelance coding jobs in my nights and weekends.

[.jon]

One thing I should mention is that for some reason I didn't consider these donationware, so maybe you could press it just a little bit?

I keep a list of pending donations from the plugins that I really use, but I haven't put you on the list. (Finally got my paypal account issue fixed, so I can clear my list again )

Anyway I suggest that you take off some of the least used plugins, you got lots of stuff there.

[cptgone]

hey guys, there's some lovely Tweakbench gear at Cafepress:
http://www.cafepress.com/tweakbench

make a donation to your garderobe.

[tweakbench]

i think you meant: http://www.cafepress.com/tweakbench

[tweakbench]

Also, i just setup this to replace the CafePress shop. Seems to be much better quality.

http://www.zazzle.com/tweakbench