The Donation Economy Kind Of Blows...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
I actually learned this years ago, but I thought, since times had changed, I’d give it another shot, and I can already tell it hasn’t changed at all. I put that payload in the “Free Shit” category, with a donation button, in much the same way that I did in the first real iteration of Analog Industries, when it was basically a site entirely devoted to free drum loops. After a few months of putting up new loop sets most every week, I had received a grand total of about $30 in donations, which prompted me to put up this page.
What’s different seven years later? The ratio. That 909 set has been downloaded so many times now that the transfer of that one file alone has eclipsed everything else residing on this computer, many times over. And the number of donations? Zero. Goose egg. Nil.
Now, I could really give a fuck about the money aspect. If I cared about that, I would have sold the set, and most likely done quite well with it. I was just curious as to whether things had changed in the public conscience since last time I did this, and the answer is “no.”
Compare that to the Bandcamp Experiment. That has proved quite successful. The Bandcamp payments far outstripped any income from the 20-odd other services that EP is available in combined, and in about 20% of the payments, the buyer payed more than they would have if they had purchased from iTunes or Amazon.
It’s too early to make a sweeping generalization (like that ever stopped me) but in my considered opinion, asking people to pay something in order to acquire the content is a wiser choice than relying on their conscience or largess alone.
I know that many of you have explored the same paths here, and it’s time for a discussion of the relative merits of the tip jar versus even a simple required payment. What’s your experience with these two methods?
10 comments
I gotta be frank and say that I didn't notice the Paypal donate info on your Free Shit. You may wish to make that bigger, as it is easy to bypass. Plus, y'know, it's called "Free Shit" as opposed to "Donation Shit."
From my own experience, I've had over 10,000 downloads of my free plugin, and the amount of money I've made from T-shirt sales is in the high dozens. I've established no link between the two (i.e. "Wanna show your support?"), so I guess that is my own bad.
I didn't notice the donate button either - but I wasn't looking for one, probably because I was in the Free Shit Zone! I don't think making the button any bigger would have made much of a difference in my case, but If it was pay what you like minimum $1 I would have twigged eventually - i'm a bit slow like that.
There's a lot of variables that come into play here, more than just "people won't pay for stuff". Laziness is huge, way bigger than people give it credit for.
I donate to all kinds of things all the time, having made an effort to pay attention and be involved in things a couple of years ago. But here's the process; "AD has some samples, I'll check them out". A this point I'm thinking "Of course I'll donate if I like them and find them useful". Download. Still haven't checked them out. May not actually check out for days, weeks, or months.
I have 4 or 5 pages open in my browser for political causes that I want to donate to, things I feel strongly about. But these are things that don't take Paypal and I need to get my wallet and sit down at the computer, all at the same time. Some of the pages have been open for weeks.
Of course people who post things think that everyone will check them out right away, of course they'll find them fantastically useful, and then selfishly choose not to help pay for the costs. Really there's a lot of laziness involved, and a number of people that download and then think "I'm probably not going to use these". When something's free that happens a lot. I think the point of view of people giving things away and people taking free things is miles apart.
I would guess that more than 9 out of 10 people wouldn't download something if it cost even $1. I would bet a lot of people wouldn't download if you put a note that said "don't download if you're not going to use them, don't waste my bandwidth". "Would you like a free sample of our new coffee" and "would you like to try our new coffee for $0.05" are totally different things, even though no one really cares about the nickel.
I think a suggested amount helps. I've often looked at a donate button wondering what amount they were expecting, got distracted and forgot the whole thing.
bb
I just had to go back and look for the donate button. I'd make it a regular Paypal button. I'm used to seeing those, suggesting a donation is appreciated.
Come on, i haven't even had a chance yet to check out the "free shit". Everybody knows that a pool isn't cleaning itself and that an SUV isn't running on love so the donations will surely keep coming in later!
I'm with bongo_x (what? there's no "i'm with bongo_x" button?). Downloaded, haven't had time to try yet, would donate if used, think the donate button could be more obvious.
To belabor further, I don't download stuff just because it's free. I have enough digital litter I've paid for already. But seeing as the AD effects I've bought are great, I guessed the odds that the free shit page would contain something worthwhile were pretty good. I like a try-before-you-buy set of sounds scenario, and appreciate the opportunity.
I should also take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you!
I think donations are even worse now than they were five years ago. For the stuff at soundsfound.sighup.ca, I get about about 11GB bandwidth consumption a month, and have done so for several years, and never once received a donation. At a certain point, I just felt the donation link didn't even make sense, since I was going to host it no matter what, so the link isn't there any more. I think I received two donations when I had a link on my music website, there too it just seemed pointless.
I think there's a lot of causes, but fundamentally most folk don't think in terms of donating for things they like, and the web is so full of free stuff (and is designed to be a mostly passive consumption mechanism) that one couldn't possibly donate to every content producer one supports.
I actually don't download much stuff any more, and didn't these samples, because I already have collected so much stuff over the years. Samples don't expire, alas.
Just to be clear, I'm not indicting you guys. God knows, you subsidize my existence enough. The link got spread around maybe 30 minutes after this page went live, and the leeching started, and that was that. People can't hot-link to it, so they have to visit that page, so it's interesting as a character study only, and that's what I'm referring to. I perhaps wasn't very clear on that.
@bub: From your comment, you seem to think I'm rich.
-CR
I mostly post without thinking first (and of course usually regret it later). You're still rich from where i'm standing though. ; )
I think I might be in agreement that there's a presentation issue here. People come to this site, hit the "Free Shit" button and land on a page that has "Free Shit" in bold type, a bunch of names in bold type and descriptions in 12-pt or whatever the default size is here, and information about usage and donations in a much smaller size, accompanied by a stylistically consistent but unfamiliar Donate button. "Free" means "free" to the surfing brain, it doesn't mean "donation optional", and the surfing brain already has "free" in mind when it arrives on the page. Once there, the eye is not drawn to either the Donate button or to the text suggesting a donation. It's drawn to the shit stated up front as being free.
However, all that said, I bet that calling the page "Donation Shit", using a standard PayPal button, and completely changing the layout to emphasize donations would result in almost exactly the same income.
--Adam
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