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Wave 0 (Pre-launch phase)

Yesterday we discussed the organization of our business model into waves. Wave 0 is our pre-launch phase, when we encourage early adopters to visit our sites and become involved with our project. We hope to capitalize on the prestige of being the first to be “in the know” about our project by encouraging these earliest fans to be among our most vocal and most devoted.

Donations (Wave 0, Support from Fans)

Almost everyone who is making money online (or trying to) provides some way for their fans to easily throw money at them in adoration or support. One of the major lessons of our research into 21st-century storytelling is that people want to support the creators who entertain them. Accepting donations is one of the simplest ways to promote this “patronage” from your fans.

Some sites will have a donation link on every page of the website; others will nestle it discreetly at the top or bottom of just the main page. You can also provide a dedicated donation page which explains how donations support you and encourages fans to to give generously. It is up to each creator and the needs of their project to decide how prominent or subtle to make your donation buttons and other calls for financial support.

Pros:

• Donation buttons can be placed anywhere
• Donations can be one-time gifts or monthly recurring donations from dedicated fans
• You can accept donations overall as an artist as well as for a particular project
• Can offer fans incentives or bonuses for donating (see supplement below)
• Can be discreet or obvious
• Works well in conjunction with deliberate fundraising drives
• Can be used in other creative ways — for example a storytelling project might find an in-story explanation for why the characters need money, turning a fundraiser into a way for fans to participate as well as financially support

Cons:

• Limited control over how much or how often donations are received, or what percentage of fans give
• Not a viable stand-alone source for most projects
• Collaborative projects may complicate how donations are allocated — who gets what percentage?

Unless the listed cons rule this out for you, this is a good option to consider, especially in the early stages of your project. It has no initial cost to set-up and takes minimal time to manage. However, except in rare circumstances, you are unlikely to be able to make a living-wage solely from donations. It is usually best used in combination with one or more of the other models.

If you’re interested in arranging to accept donations on your site, here are a few links to research. Remember that most of these services restrict the ability to register an account to people with bank cards, and certainly not everyone has a bank account even now. Are you providing some way for a potential non-account-holder to still get their donation to you? Or do you assume that percentage is small enough that it isn’t worth the extra work, and just accept online donations? Do you want to post a p.o. box address to accept snail-mail donations? Or is that part of an outdated model for your needs? Do you list suggested donation amounts? Or let the fans decide?

Common services for accepting donations:

• Paypal
• Amazon Honor System

Donations Supplement: bonuses for donations

One way to encourage donations is to offer some sort of bonus for those who do so. This has been done for years with public broadcasting fund-drives, where organizations will offer various items “free” with different donation amounts. This concept can easily be adapted to creative projects. One example which comes to mind is the browser-based game Kingdom of Loathing, which offers players a special item for every $10 they donate. These items can be traded in for other special items, sold to other players, or displayed for prestige.

Although later on we’ll talk about some other ways of encouraging patronage through giving access to extra features or content, consider that even simple methods — such as public thanks or adding a special flag or message to a user’s public profile on your forums — can make donating a great deal more attractive to your fans.

Other projects supported by donations (two out of thousands!):

• Shadow Unit – online storytelling project
• Escape Pod – SF podcasts

Other posts:

• Part 0: Series Announcement
• Part 1: About the Series
• Part 2: The Five W’s
• Part 3: DMAIC
• Part 4: 4 Simple Steps
• Part 5: Time Vs. Money
• Part 6: Waves

The Artist Business Models series is based on a paper written by Reesa Brown and Kit O’Connell, with assistance from Steven Brust, Ken Brown, Deborah Ibarra, and many others. At the close of the series, the entire business model paper will be posted to Continuous Labs. The business model paper and blog posts are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 license.