3 Ways to Raise Money Online Free Through Donations

Before you can start accepting donations, you will have to make it easy for people to donate to you. Now, the only way to accept donations online is through a box/button. That button can be placed anywhere, on your website, blog or even in your email.

If you don’t have a blog or website yet, that’s no problem. You can get one for free from Blogger or WordPress.com.

Once you have your site set up, you can use any of the following site’s widgets to display a button anywhere on your site so people can donate to you or your site:

1. PayPal

Collect donations from a button on your website, or even using a link in an email! PayPal Donations is a low cost way for you to accept credit card and bank account donations. Integrate PayPal Donations with your website in a few easy steps.

PayPal perhaps offers the friendliest help to organize this donation capability.

What is expected of you is to insert a string of codes so that the donation button can become visible.

You can set up a PayPal donation button here.

The good thing about PayPal is that whatever donate amount would go directly into your account, and they treat this as just any ordinary transaction (so there is no special levy imposed on donations).

Of course, it helps that PayPal happens to be one of the most popular payment processes around, so that makes it easier to reach out to a great pool of potential donors.

Be sure to check out my making money with PayPal donations for step by step guide on how to set up your button.

2. ChipIn

Update: Sadly, after merging with InMobi Technologies, ChipIn discontinued the service recently.

ChipIn is a Web-based service that simplifies the process of collecting money from groups of people. We make this process quick, easy, and secure, and we provide organizers with numerous ways to get the word out about their ChipIn event.

One of my favorites is ChipIn. Immediately after your registration, you can go on to create a widget. On it, you could also define the total donation amount you hope to reach. As you move along, ChipIn will monitor how you are progressing towards your objective.

The thing I like best is that the company makes use of your PayPal account to take in all the donations. That for me adds to the familiarity factor and enforce the trust level.

Whether you are looking for a widget that looks pretty cool or a mechanism helping to track your donation objective, ChipIn would not disappoint.

3. ScratchBack

Update: It seems like SB has also discontinued its service.

ScratchBack is an online ‘tipping’ system (or as we like to call it, a fancy-schmancy tip jar). It allows you, the blogger, to accept tips and ‘give back’ links or images in return on your blog.

ScratchBack is the latest player to come to this game, but they probably offer the most innovative solutions so far. It doesn’t ask for any specific technical skill on your part.

All that is expected is for you to insert the code wherever you want the widget to appear. Any appreciative reader can buy links off your ScratchBack widget (as such links are nofollow, you will not get penalized by Google).

You specify the price target you so fancy. But be aware that ScratchBack makes a small commission on your collection, let them have it as they really make life easy for you.

The income potential through their solution is great (the best I have experienced) as the tendency to donate is higher because there is something for them in return, that comes in the form of exposure to your blog in the ScratchBack case.

How To Accept Donations

While making donations to a specific cause is always a noble act, most donors will find themselves to be in a more charitable mood if they do get something back in return. But if you feel that SratchBack is still not doing enough to reach your monetary goal, then creation of a full page dedicated to donation may just worth your while.

There is no limit on how donation page would look like. But if you are looking for ideas check out donation pages of RedCross and UnitedWay.

ou can always count on PayPal to be designated as your collection center, or make use of ChipIn to keep track of the money coming in.

On the top end of the page, you can show your readers about the latest count of the donation drive.

Directly below that, you can display the names of all donors with the donated amount placed just next to the names (do it on descending order). Within each name, there would be a permanent link embedded to it.

You would be surprised how human psychology works.

Some will be motivated to donate because they want to get onto the top of this list, while others feel obliged to do so as they are rewarded with their links appearing on your blog!

At the end of the day, no matter how you do it, donations will come.

Such online donations can be mutually beneficial, to both you and your donors. As you happily review how successful a previous donation drive has been, never forget to thank the donors.