First let me say I am in no way passing judgement here, rather I want to examine various options I have seen around WordPress and get your feelings on them.  What is right for one person is wrong for another so please remember that if you use one or more of these methods I am not actually aiming this at you more just querying different things people have done and there effectiveness.

First let me explain where this came from I was catching up on a few posts when I read this one from the lovely Cristian Mihai A bunch of thanks and it got me thinking about all the donate buttons I have noticed around WordPress for various blogs.

This is one of several fund-raising efforts I have seen by Cristian to help fund his writing career, to be fair he does offer items or services in return be it a shout out or a review on his blog or as in the case of when he was raising funds for a new computer copies of his books.  I have seen other blogs where they give away their book for free but place a donate button and ask people donate what they think the book is worth, others simply have the donate button there and gratefully accept donations.

From the posts I have read regarding these fund-raising efforts the latter two do not yield results Cristian’s method however does seem to be hitting the targets set.  The thing is should he need to be doing this, shouldn’t he be able to earn enough from his book sales to allow him to consider writing as a full time job, and by giving away his books to those who donate does that mean he negatively impacts his potential sales?   I don’t know the answers to this and am merely speculating and this is not having a go at Cristian I respect him hugely, as I say this is about discussing whether bloggers have the right to be funded for their blogging and if so how do they go about it.

Most of us blog to firstly improve our writing and possibly build an audience then once we have work out their we use it for self promotion, most of us would love to be able to give up paid day jobs to focus on writing but very few of us will ever earn enough to do so.  Theoretically the donation method could allow this especially if like Christian you have a catalogue of work to give away as incentives, but it will only work short term, you cannot ask the same people to give over and over again so therefore it relies on you actually making enough of a success with your work to gain a sizeable new following.  The other issue is of course it is not a reliable income unless you don’t really need the income ( but then why would you do it?), for those with a family it is not really an option.

Right I have to go get ready to head out to the day job so would love to hear your thoughts, is funding for the blog something you have considered, and if you have tried it how has it worked for you?