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Re:When good ideas make bad business by achillean on Friday January 03, 2020 @03:08PM (#21949803)
Donations are extremely difficult to make work. I tried it after getting decent traction in 2009 and didn't receive a single donation to cover server expenses. I'm guessing with Patreon things have gotten a bit easier but for a business I would highly advise against going down the donations route. In general, small payments also tend to take up a disproportionate amount of your support time compared to larger transactions so you have to be prepared to deal w/ that.
Re:When good ideas make bad business by rossdavidh on Friday January 03, 2020 @06:03PM (#21951266)
One big difference post-Patreon is that I no longer think "my small regular contribution is just going to get chewed up in transaction fees", since Patreon does just one transaction a month and then divides it up among several people/organizations that I support.

But, it would not be my first business model to try, just an alternative to "we built it but now let's just shut it off".