Theocacao: Cocoa Dev Central Donations

Cocoa Dev Central Donations

The donations for the Cocoa Dev Central are short of where they need to be in order to be self-sustaining. This is an official call to make a donation if you haven't already done so.

The people that do donate tend to be very generous, which I'm very thankful for. Most donate the highest-requested amount of $21, and some go beyond that. Very few donate the minimum, but the site benefits from any level of help.

If you use Cocoa Dev Central as an ongoing resource or found one or more of the articles particularly useful, please make a donation now. Theocacao often functions as an extension or testing ground for new material, so if you find good Cocoa help here, maybe you could contribute to the effort for that purpose.

I'm open to feedback on what people would be willing to donate for, but keep in mind that most of this stuff simply takes a lot of time and effort to do.

The reason I ask for donations at all is that I want to put as much time into this as I can, and provide Mac OS X programmers with the best stuff I can come up with.

You can donate here. Thanks in advance.

Cocoa Dev Central Donations
Posted Dec 6, 2006 — 10 comments below

John Devor — Dec 06, 06 2605

Both this blog and CocoaDevCentral are two of my favorite resources for cocoa information. You're truly doing a great service for the cocoa community.

Thanks!

Kyle — Dec 06, 06 2606

Just got a donation of my own from a happy user of my first real cocoa application. I passed along $12 from one cocoa developer to another.

Thanks for the hard work. I appreciate the time you take to write these up. If there's anything I can help with, let me know.

Thanks again,
Kyle

Dan Price — Dec 07, 06 2608

I'll certainly donate - how short are you Scott?

Kyle, do have a link to your app?

Michael Strck — Dec 07, 06 2609

Hi Scott,

I recently sent $21 your way, but never heard back about wether the money reached you or wether you even appreciate it ;-) Now, I'm not personally offended and do not really care all that much, but I can't imagine that I'm your typical contributor in that respect.

The first rule of customer relationship management is that you follow up on EVERYTHING. If you want to have people donate multiple times, you have to commit to giving them feedback. Contributors are customers, and you will have to expend effort to get their initial and continued attention.

A fairly recent example will demonstrate my point. Kottke ended his "professional blogger" experiment after a year, citing the fact that practically all contributions had been made made during the first few weeks, when he had a big, all-out drive for funds.

In my mind, the mistake he made was obvious and pretty ridiculous: After the first few weeks, every highgly visible appeal for donations was GONE. To the casual reader, kottke.org looked just like your average blog. You had to really make an effort to find out about the fact that he was trying to make a living off of it, and about his micro-patronship program. If you happen to subscribe via RSS, there was ZERO indication that you might want to donate to keep the service up. What was he thinking?

Don't fall into the trap of not wanting to be obnoxious. Even Wikipedia has to run highly visible appeals for donations at the very top of it's pages for a cumulative period of several weeks each year, in addition to lobbying for support with big-time philantropies. How bloggers and freeware-coders can believe they will get away with any less is beyond me...

Scott Stevenson — Dec 07, 06 2611

I recently sent $21 your way, but never heard back about wether the money reached you or wether you even appreciate it

This is actually incredibly bizarre timing because just minutes ago I opened your email to send you a thank-you note. I do send a personal email to everyone who donates, but a few got lost in the shuffle, and I was in the midst of going back and correcting that.

Don't fall into the trap of not wanting to be obnoxious

I appreciate why you say that and it is something that's on my mind. I really want to find a balance, but you're absolutely right.

I'll also try to do something about the fact that your name is being mangled by the comment system. :)

Michael Strck — Dec 07, 06 2612

This is actually incredibly bizarre timing because just minutes ago I opened your email to send you a thank-you note. I do send a personal email to everyone who donates, but a few got lost in the shuffle, and I was in the midst of going back and correcting that.

Thank you! I was not actually complaining and figured it had simply fallen between the cracks. I was just trying to make a point.

I'll also try to do something about the fact that your name is being mangled by the comment system. :)

Thanks. I have been bitten by this a few times when commenting here. I always forget to leave out the umlaut and use "oe" instead. Just in case: It's an "umlaut o", a.k.a "ö; decimal Unicode 246; hexadecimal Unicode 00F6; Latin small letter o with diaeresis" ;-)

All the best,
Michael

Ian Robinson — Dec 08, 06 2614

Have you considered setting up a monthly donation facility through PayPal? I recently set up one for the Richard Dawkins Foundation and Paypal automatically pays my monthly amount. See RDF for the various options they have for PayPal. BTW. Just sent you a donation.

Ian

Barron — Dec 13, 06 2676

I just went to the Cocoa Dev Central site and didn't see a donate link anywhere on the front page. Am I missing it? <grin>

Thanks.

hscm — Apr 20, 08 5752

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Graphic design — Dec 29, 09 7054

Great news. Thanks!

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