PayPal Buy-Me-Coffee Button

I am certain you have seen donation/contribution requests on the internet that were presented as "buy me coffee" or "buy me a beer" opportunities.

Well, a friend came up with a new twist on that. Not so new, actually. But I had never seen the concept applied to volunteer website funding.

When you contribute to his website, you also get thank-you gifts. In other words, when you thank him for his content by giving a few dollars, he acknowledges your contribution with a special free download not available elsewhere.

When I realized what he did, I slapped my head. Of course! It makes perfect sense. Not only does it acknowledge the contribution, it returns something in appreciation. Further, by letting it be known on his entire website that certain items are given away for contributing a cup of coffee, it is likely to result in more coffee funding.

For an incentive, the giveaway needs to be something the contributor wants. And Eldon Sarte does exactly that. As of this writing, he gives 2 ebooks as an acknowledgement. They both contain wonderful explanations of specific marketing techniques — how to and what to avoid.

See the Wordpreneur Cafe page for how he implemented the idea.

If you use WordPress and would like his help to implement it at your websites, get in touch with him via his contact page.

If you do not use WordPress (or even if you do), the Willmaster Library PayPal Coffee Fund Button article contains a PHP script to send the payment information to PayPal and return the contributor to the correct thank-you page. The PHP script includes optional emailing and/or logging of the form information.

Will Bontrager