{"id":630,"date":"2007-06-29T08:56:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-29T12:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/29\/donation-culture\/"},"modified":"2007-06-29T08:56:57","modified_gmt":"2007-06-29T12:56:57","slug":"donation-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/29\/donation-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Donation Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several of my friends at LiveJournal considered the permanent account sale<\/a> recently, trying to decide whether to pay to make their account permanent. The ones who did often framed it to themselves<\/a> as their way of saying thanks for a service that they have used extensively. I eventually decided against the permanent account, as I’m not convinced I’ll be using LJ in 6-7 years. But I did sign up for a paid account earlier this year, despite not using the paid member features, as my way of saying thanks.<\/p>\n

I’m trying to find ways to support the services I like on the Internet because I can afford to now. I donate to Questionable Content<\/a> regularly, I finally paid for TextPad<\/a>, I’m an ESPN.com “Insider”<\/a>, etc. Of the six books I reviewed in my nonfiction roundup<\/a>, I bought three of them because they were written by bloggers that I read. Even if I didn’t like the books, I felt that buying their book and increasing their Amazon rankings was a way of saying thanks for all of the free content I have enjoyed. Buying CDs or T-shirts at concerts is a similar tactic.<\/p>\n

I wonder how many people are like me, though. How many people pay for a service that they can get for free? Will enough of the audience donate for free content to continue to thrive?<\/p>\n

Then again, y’all convinced me<\/a> that people will generate content purely for the satisfaction they get from the act of creation. There are motivations other than money, or I wouldn’t spend hours each week blogging. So maybe creating a culture of compensation doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n

And even for those who are motivated by money, the best route may not be donations or subscriptions, but ad revenue. The creator of the ludicrously addictive Desktop Tower Defense<\/a> game is apparently making close to $10,000 a month from Google ads<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I feel that I have the obligation to acknowledge the value of content I like. I’d feel terrible if somebody whose work I enjoyed stopped doing it because they were not being sufficiently rewarded. There are different ways I try to do this. <\/p>\n