Learn & Master Cocos2D Game Development

This is a follow-up post to my Software Developer’s Guide to the Donation Button post, a rather lengthy one at that. To make the key points easily digestible I offer you my 10 Golden Rules for Donate Buttons which should guide potential donees (those receiving donations) whether they should be using a Donate Button or not.

The rules don’t leave a lot of room for acceptable uses of a Donate Button, this is on purpose.

1. If you don’t need donations, don’t ask for them.
2. If you own a business, don’t ask for donations for anything in the same business domain, period.
3. If you greatly benefit from your free work in other ways (traffic, marketing, paid work, etc.), stop accepting donations.
4. If you can’t explain exactly how donations help your work, don’t even imply that they do.
5. If you just want to earn some money, sell something. Anything.
6. If receiving money is a source of motivation for you, donations will be counterproductive.
7. If you want your work to be appreciated, accept physical gifts, not monetary donations.
8. Don’t beg for donations and don’t appeal to your user’s bad conscience. No free project that deserves to survive needs money that badly.
9. Don’t expect or demand anyone to donate, ever. Not even Mr./Ms. Got-Rich-From-Your-Work. You decided to give your stuff away for free, remember?
10. Every new Donate button makes all others a little less attractive, and less beneficial overall. The purpose of your Donate button should far outweigh its detrimental effect on others.

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