I've been thinking about payment buttons

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

There's "DONATE" and "BUY IT NOW" and I've also seen things like "TIP JAR".  Are some better received than others, for crowdfunding?  Are ones with actual art better (or worse) than the standard paypal buttons?

What has been your experience with these?  I doubt we have anything resembling a marketing study available, of course.  But what's your perception?  Has anyone gotten feedback from their readers on one or another option?

I'm thinking that "donate" is really a word used for charity, and I'm not a charity, so I want to change that.  But to what?
 

Comments

[jolantru.livejournal.com]

How about "contribute"?

I use 'donate' and 'cyber-tin'. So far no comments or feedback regarding this from my readers.

[dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com]

Contribute is good. It suggests a partnership between the reader & writer.

I don't care for "Tip Jar" because it feels like I'm asking for spare change.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Agreed... a tip feels like an afterthought.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I admit, the "tip jar" I saw was a fun, cartoony-type drawing, with paper money going inside it.

This may depend on audience; at house concerts they use a tip jar, and many people pay the $10-$15 per person they might at a regular concert in a small venue.

I remember one musician who had a half-size plastic gas can she used as her tip jar, which seemed to work for her, as she traveled a lot from gig to gig.

[caveman-joe.livejournal.com]

Well, since I hid my donations buttons behind a fancy coin mech faceplate (http://www.improbableisland.com) image, my donations have more than doubled. Take from that what you will. :)

[danceswithlife]

Speaking as "audience" I also like your tracking of wages compared to McDonald's and the idea of donator points.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Did you do this at the same time you announced your game is going to be your full-time job again?

[caveman-joe.livejournal.com]

I did, but the MotD in which I announce the full-time-job thing is inaccessible to new players unless they scroll back, and few bother. I'm going to put the post up in a separate page and link to it from behind the coin mech, but I left it like this for now so that I could gauge roughly how many of the new donations are coming because of the coin mech, because of the new skin (red makes people want to spend money - odd, but it seems to work), because of new game mechanics, or because of other factors.

It's hard to determine who's donating what because of what, but certainly having the coin mech there has helped. How much it's helped is up for question. Also it's pretty. :)

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Well, you can see who donates/subscribes, right? I'm guessing the increase was indeed in new players.

Oh, yeah, SUBSCRIBE was one of the options I wanted to mention in the original post.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I like "Contribute." It feels participatory.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

This is a place where marketing research would be handy.

I use the standard "Donate" button and nobody has said anything about it.

I don't use "Buy It Now" as a button phrase because 1) I write lots of poems during a fishbowl and don't want to put a button on each of them, and 2) I also accept general donations. So it's not quite right for my project, but I think there are plenty where it would be good.

[danceswithlife]

As "audience" tips makes me think of the street musician, and of the fact that I am getting something wonderful for what I can contribute. "Tip jar" makes me think of counter service where I contribute mostly to acknowledge people remembering my name and my order, and being willing to do substitutions for me.

"Contribute" does feel more participatory than "tips" but I'm also wondering about tags over paypal buttons like "creation fund" or "keep it coming!" or "want more?" or "I like this!"

I think what I'm getting at with those ideas if my belief that if I value writers, artists, musicians and appreciate their work then I need to contribute to their ability to keep it coming to me.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I like your suggested wording. I want to gather some artwork for my buttons. I want a guitar case or a fancy hat for under songs. I'm not sure what art would work well for "Subscribe".

My instinct is that an artistic button will garner more than the boring buttons.

I also do like "buy it now", though I'm not sure I can articulate why.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Buy it now works if there's something to buy... not so much if "it" is more nebulous. To me it has the inescapable connotation of a physical object. :)

The one useful thing about the existing buttons is that they're instantly recognizable: people don't even have to read a Paypal-standard button to know it's a way to give money to people. Given how many folks I've had asking me 'how do you donate,' you want to make it as obvious as possible where to click...!

[zeeth_kyrah]

An icon for "Subscribe" could be a pamphlet or booklet, as in "Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter."

[wetdryvac.livejournal.com]

Reaction to the various wordings and cute/not-cute graphic/not-graphic setups for pay changes by region, by genre, and by presentation. If what one's creating is going to be released without participation, typically that's a donation. In those cases, having a text blurb in addition to the button itself, "Your donations keep this site going!" Or similar, help.

Making your payment button a graphic helps in almost every case. People recognize buttons more readily than text, so if you're using something like PayPal, you'll get a better result if you use a graphic instead of a form "submit" item.

Northeast and northwest, as well as California seem (on a very limited research pool, but nevertheless) to have a preference for official buttons (PayPal logo is the most recognizable non-merchant-account requiring, Visa/Mastercard are most recognizable if you've got a merchant account) and the South as well as parts of the Southeast appear to be equally balanced between that and more customized items. If you're a well known character artist, comic webmaster, or similar, including a character in the button graphic appears to push sales - humans are tactile creatures, and the underlying message appears to be direct contact with character.

For an example of what a PayPal button might look like, and how you can place it (And yes, if you pay using this, I get the money) see below:

...which, on further testing doesn't display in comments, but *does* display on one's own pages. Interesting...

So I'll put the example up in my user-info, where in theory it will work.