A way for WordPress plug-in writers to increase donations ten-fold
Here’s an idea that came from following a thread of Alex King‘s ajax powered plug-in donation experiment. I can’t find it to link to at the moment.
The problem which a few commenters pointed out is that people don’t want to pay first without knowing if a plugin solves their problem or not. In many cases they are willing to donate if it does solve the problem. But by the time they have got everything running and know that it does, they may have forgotten about their intentions to donate.
So here is a plan that I think might work. Feel free to knock holes in it in the comments, so that a better plan may arise.
Offer your plugin as shareware (in the true sense i.e. fully functional, will not time-out). On the download page ask for an email address and a pledge of a donation. Word it along the lines of “If this plugin works and solves my problem I pledge:” Letting the downloader choose their own amount. Don’t make it mandatory and assure downloaders their email address will not be spammed.
After a set number of days (7, 15, 30??), automatically email the downloader asking “Did my plug-in solve your problem? If it did, would you like to donate $pledge_amount? If it didn’t, could you briefly tell me why so that I can make it better?” and supply the donation link in the email. You could supply two links, one linking to the pledged donation amount and one which the amount is not set, in case the donator wishes to donate more or less than the pledged amount.
Of course, for some your plug-in might not work, some people will enter fake email addresses, and some might think that the pledge they gave was too high and on second thoughts will not donate. I don’t think this plan will help in those cases, the point is to make it easy for people you have helped to pledge and donate if they want.
My guess is that this may help plug-in authors increase the amount they get via donations ten-fold. And of course this would be a perfect idea to be implemented as a WordPress plug-in itself. If you use this idea and it works for you, please share it with fellow plug-in writers. If it works really well, please blog about your success story and link back here.
Yes. I think that this would work to and extent. However IF they really wanted to donate then this wouldnt be necessary as people would really be up to donate however much once they installed it. Once the plugin works would you really forget what solved your problem?
I’m usually quite good at donating and supporting software authors, but sometimes I forget. When you set up a blog, it’s not uncommon to try out half a dozen plugins/themes etc.
I remember when web sites didn’t accept credit cards and asked you to send in payment by check. Sales of their products were flat, but jumped ten-fold or more when they did eventually add online payment. The moral of the story is let people pay immediately when they want to pay and make it easy. The same effect is why 1-click ordering on amazon exists.