Sometimes making money on the internet requires nothing more than asking for it. With all of the constant banter about expensive pay-per-click campaigns, affiliate marketing and advertising revenue, wouldn’t it be nice if you could simple launch a site that asked for donations?

What is interesting, is that begging for money, in many cases, has worked out to thousands of dollars in profits. As it so happens, a lot of people have loose change in their PayPal accounts and respond quite well to a friendly cry for help. While there are probably a few more scams out there than legitimate needs for extra funding, if you understand what works… begging can make you rich with little effort and almost zero downside. ;)

The Examples
Before I explore just what I am going to attempt, I think that it is important to look toward some more noteworthy examples of people making money by begging on the internet. Perhaps the most popular example is the Million Dollar Homepage. Essentially, a motivated (and very clever) student decided to sell 1,000,000 blocks of ads at $1 apiece on the front page of his website to raise money for college and other activities. By making it simple, fast, and profitable (cheap advertising?)… the founder Alex Tew has made his mark on the industry by selling out every last spot in record time. There have been tons of clones of this project, some have worked, most have failed… but the idea is ingenious nonetheless.

One of these “beg for money” websites that I more recently heard about is the Save Karyn project, where a women who was massively in debt ($20,000) decided to openly seek help on the internet in the form of donations. Despite the poor quality of the actual website, she managed a whopping $13,323.08 in outside donations though the internet. Not bad, eh? :)

Forming An Idea That Works
You’ve seen what’s been done before, but how exactly can you make your own website that is successful like those that have been tried? Your first step needs to be an idea. The most important thing to consider is that your need should be something commonplace and real. Make it something reasonable, because nobody is going to donate to Joe Schmo so you can have some more beer money… or because you want to buy yourself a new yacht. People respond to need, so if you show them that you need money to go to college, or you are in debt and need financial assistance, you are much more likely to get some love right off the bat.

Setting Up a Personal Goal
Once you have your idea, you need to solidify in your mind exactly how much money that you will need. Nobody is going to donate to a website that is just asking for money, you need to have a set amount (like $1,000) that you are shooting for. Why? It creates an emotional desire to help.

I think that the most important aspect of any website that sells itself out for donations is the progress bar. People want to be updated on how much has been donated so far, and how much is still needed. A nice graphic on the top of the page would be the most preferable measure to take here, as visitors and potential donators will want to see that they are making a difference.

Don’t Integrate It, Separate It
One thing that has failed time and time again is the donation integration. What do I mean by this? If you have a website, don’t try to include on top of it all a donation/begging page… it’s much better to keep these things separate. I recommend setting up a new website, which you can then link to and advertise from your main blog or website as you wish. What will NEVER work is simply adding a sidebar widget that offers $1 donations through PayPal. You simply aren’t going to get a lot of attention, as people aren’t coming to your website thinking about your money troubles. If you can’t separate your other websites from your begging website, the emotional pull towards giving cash will never exist… and you won’t be successful.

One recent example of the integration attempt that I have seen was from Chetan on The WWW Blog. He started out with a fantastic goal. A new iPhone? That’s practical, current (topical) and not too much to ask for. While this donation frenzy started off on the right foot, I feel that things started to lose momentum from the get-go, as he tried to simply integrate it with his blog. This isn’t what you want to do, and I feel that separating the call-for-cash and the blog would have made a big difference.

My Idea for a Donation Website
Since I’m a college student, it’s going to be very easy for me to exploit the emotional pull of a donation page, I’m not even going to pretend that I am being clever here. Of course, this won’t go live for at least a week due to other projects, but I intend on launching a website geared on buying a refurbished LCD TV for my upcoming semester at college. I feel like this is a reasonable request, and since a lot of my visitors have been in college at some point, I wouldn’t be too surprised if this idea works.

So essentially, this is going to be a paid experiment, where I am going to attempt to collect something like $400 in order to buy a standard rate LCD TV. My basic logic follows that I will create my own website and offer free links and advertising to anyone that donates. I think the best route is to offer to write a blurb about each website that donates, with more words going to heavier donations. Offering something is very important, and ad space is the most obvious ploy. By spending $10 on a domain name and a quick website to track the progress of my donations, I hope to reach my target within a month.

Bottom Line: Websites that openly seek donations have been some of the most profitable ventures on the internet. The major upside is that there is really no downside risk, as you aren’t paying for much more than a domain name and hosting. The downside can be that things can be slow moving, and you might drive yourself crazy before reaching a goal. There have been literally hundreds of failed attempts to turn a quick profit, but I remain optimistic in the potential behind “begging” websites.

-The Net Fool

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