So you have this website going or some source code on github, and like to earn a few bucks. Donations, right? Hold on, there are a couple things you should consider before you add that Donate button!
UPDATE: If you prefer a concise, to the point summary of this post, you should read the follow-up post The 10 Golden Rules for a Donate Button.
In case you haven’t noticed, you won’t find a Donate button here or on my other websites. It may seem strange that the guy who never had a donation button of all people should write a guide to the donation button.
I consciously decided against having a donation button. You’ll find a number of reasons in this post, and maybe at the end of it you come to agree with me that Donate buttons are over-used, and the more developers offer them the fewer donations reach those developers who actually need and/or deserve donations the most.
I also wrote this as guidance particularly for individual indie or open source developers who are accepting donations or considering to do so, because donating to an individual is fundamentally different than donating to a (charitable) organisation or a software project (team) as a whole. You will also get some ideas on how you can improve your donation acceptance rate and which alternatives for voluntary compensation and appreciation exist.
Rule Number 1: Be a charity or a business. Never both!
I sell commercial products, both my own and third party products for which I receive a commission fee for each sale. I am self-employed, I make my living from those products and a few select contract jobs for people I know personally. It is fair to say that I’m running a business.
For me the question of whether I should ask for donations boils down to this: should a business be asking for and accepting donations? Continue reading »
Just a quick note: the single most requested respectively criticized part of my book was in Chapter 4 where I’m introducing the moving spiders. The @interface code was missing from the book as well as the line in the init method calling one of the new methods. These are added now, so the code works directly from the book. It should be in the next chapters & code update (but don’t ask me when, I don’t know either).
Thanks for letting me know about it, and in general for all the great feedback! What amazes me most is that there wasn’t a single person saying that the book isn’t good, or not good enough, or could be so much better if only … Normally one has to expect at least a certain percentage of responses to be less than happy, but no, every single one was positive, even those with criticism. And a few very overwhelmingly appreciative. I can’t say thank you enough for all of that praise, it’s been a great source of inspiration and motivation, especially at the times when I was super-busy and working 14-hour days for a week. Thank you! 
Amazon Book Reviews
I thought it’ll be great to see some of the cocos2d book reader reviews appearing on Amazon. If you’d like to write a review, I’d really appreciate it, because right now there are none. Here are the links to the cocos2d book for every Amazon store worldwide:
Amazon.com (United States)
Amazon.ca (Canada)
Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)
Amazon.de (Germany)
Amazon.fr (France)
Amazon.co.jp (Japan)
Please mention that you read the book in its Alpha form. I don’t want anyone to think that the reviews are hoaxed because they came in before the book came out. Not everyone may be aware of Apress’ alpha program, and pre-release reviews are often viewed with skepticism.
Btw, Amazon.com lists the book’s release date as December 30th. Right now that’s just a rough date, like I said earlier, the goal is to get the book out in time for Xmas. Hopefully even several weeks before Xmas.
Or, in other words, I’ll be away from home (which happens to be my office) from Tuesday (tomorrow) to and including Friday for a much needed short vacation. That is to say I’ll probably be unresponsive for the rest of the week and I’ll catch up on emails next week, please be patient.
At one day I’ll be visiting the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, the world’s largest model railroad exhibition, on Wednesdy or Thursday. On the off-chance that you’re in the Wunderland too and would like to meet me in person, send me an email. Maybe we find a time to meet up and have a quick chat and connect. Speaking of meeting, I’ll also hold a cocos2d presentation (in german) at this year’s Macoun conference in Frankfurt, October 2nd and 3rd where I’d be happy to meet up with you, if you happen to be there. And in general, if you’re able to come to Mainz we can meet up just to connect and talk about experiences, like I recently did with Johannes Seidel from Blacksmith Games. That was a meeting I enjoyed very much, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he was also the person behind the AppventCalendar, which essentially spawned Free App A Day (run by someone else). He also had some great marketing ideas that helped make his game Plushed a success (before you ask: it’s made with Unity). And it’s a deserved success. Definetely watch out for more games from him, and follow him on Twitter.
Those developer experiences and life stories are very inspiring and a fun thing to hear and talk about. I’ve been reading a lot of Paul Graham’s Essays once again because he’s the go-to guy for those kinds of experiences in writing, and I bought Founders at Work for exactly the same reason. Motivation, inspiration and thinking outside the box. For that I’m very happy that I can read those essays, docs and eBoos on my wirelessly (meaning: no wifi) iPad by using Instapaper and GoodReader for eBooks. Have I ever used iBooks? No, I don’t need it thanks to these two excellent iPad Apps.
Before I sound too much like a product marketer … I’ll see/hear/write/email you next week!
