Donation Questions - Garry's Mod

I have friends telling me to set up a donation button for my server. I kinda don't think I should just because I am hosting at home and am not sure how to set up a thing where people can send me money. Is there anything fundamentally wrong with having a donation option? I just don't want to seem like a money grabber. What are your thoughts about home-hosted dedicated servers that have donation options? Yes, it would be nice to get a chunk of the internet bill paid, but still, something about it seems kinda... skeevy.

Paypal is pretty easy, and there's nothing wrong with taking donations. How big is your server, population-wise?

[QUOTE=man with hat;50683967]Paypal is pretty easy, and there's nothing wrong with taking donations. How big is your server, population-wise?[/QUOTE] I literally just opened it; very, very, small population. I know that there is nothing wrong with it, I just feel like because I am not using extra "resources" to host the server that it would essentially just be money being thrown at me. I dunno. Something about it doesn't sit exactly right.

If you're offering a server for others to play on for free and they're willingly giving you their money there is absolutely no problem with it. You can easily setup and embeddable donation button with PayPal's official donation button option. Read more here: [url]https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/get-started/donate-button[/url] Good luck with the mad cash flow.

[QUOTE=snivell;50684015]If you're offering a server for others to play on for free and they're willingly giving you their money there is absolutely no problem with it. You can easily setup and embeddable donation button with PayPal's official donation button option. Read more here: [url]https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/get-started/donate-button[/url] Good luck with the mad cash flow.[/QUOTE] Hehe. I hardly doubt there will be "mad" cash flow, not unless I get a full community of people backing the server. That would be nice, but, ya know, unlikely.

[QUOTE=ricoben3;50684023]Hehe. I hardly doubt there will be "mad" cash flow, not unless I get a full community of people backing the server. That would be nice, but, ya know, unlikely.[/QUOTE] What kind of server do you run and what's your average players?

[QUOTE=snivell;50684039]What kind of server do you run and what's your average players?[/QUOTE] Its a Trouble in Terrorist Town server, and the server isn't completely launched yet. I am more or less still in debugging mode trying to get stuff more or less set up. Some randos have came in at time and I have used friends for various testing, however none of them are dedicated to the server. lol This more or less would be something I would want to do in the future, that is, if the community I hope to build would back me.

[QUOTE=ricoben3;50684050]Its a Trouble in Terrorist Town server, and the server isn't completely launched yet. I am more or less still in debugging mode trying to get stuff more or less set up. Some randos have came in at time and I have used friends for various testing, however none of them are dedicated to the server. lol This more or less would be something I would want to do in the future, that is, if the community I hope to build would back me.[/QUOTE] Oh well TTT gets players extremely easily. Donations come in slower though so I've heard. I've only had experience with DarkRP donations as my friend ran VaultRP and made around $3,000~ in 3 months and I am now currently running the new VaultRP with the same friend.

[QUOTE=snivell;50684101]Oh well TTT gets players extremely easily. Donations come in slower though so I've heard. I've only had experience with DarkRP donations as my friend ran VaultRP and made around $3,000~ in 3 months and I am now currently running the new VaultRP with the same friend.[/QUOTE] This is essentially why I am not expecting much of anything. I assume I'd make anywhere from $10-$50 (the latter being an AMAZING month) a month doing this. With that kind of money it would be able to help pay the internet bill somewhat. That'd be nice lol.

I don't mind donations. Just servers that do this "Donate now and get these special things that make you have a bigger advantage over non donators" That type of donation i don't likes. (I trust you wouldnt tho :3)

[QUOTE=eligrand1;50684216]I don't mind donations. Just servers that do this "Donate now and get these special things that make you have a bigger advantage over non donators" That type of donation i don't likes. (I trust you wouldnt tho :3)[/QUOTE] The donations I had on my old server was custom rank, buying T (costs 10kpts), buying D (costs 5kpts), 50kpts, Player models, Thank you on loading screen, and notation on both website and forums of donator status. Nothing that gives OP advantage. I did those because I was paying money for NFO to host the server. I wouldn't even give buying T or buying D this time around because I'm hosting myself and currently, as well as in the future, don't see good justification for it.

Does internet cost money? Yes. Does a machine that can run a server cost money? Yes. There is nothing *morally* wrong with taking donations. You are going to have to add some sort of incentive, though. I had a fairly popular server a few years ago and had a strict no pay-2-win policy in terms of donations. I made no money. You're going to have to sellout.

Donations systems are fine, the problem is that when donation benefits fuck up gameplay balance.

[QUOTE=toastvendor;50687050]Does internet cost money? Yes. Does a machine that can run a server cost money? Yes. There is nothing wrong with taking donations. You are going to have to add some sort of incentive, though. I had a fairly popular server a few years ago and had a strict no pay-2-win policy in terms of donations. I made no money. You're going to have to sellout.[/QUOTE] Even if you didn't have to pay for either of those things accepting donations would still be acceptable. If you want to give players the [B]option[/B] to give you their money in return for you offering them this platform to play on I don't see the problem.

[QUOTE=toastvendor;50687050]Does internet cost money? Yes. Does a machine that can run a server cost money? Yes. There is nothing wrong with taking donations. You are going to have to add some sort of incentive, though. I had a fairly popular server a few years ago and had a strict no pay-2-win policy in terms of donations. I made no money. You're going to have to sellout.[/QUOTE] What kind of incentives did you give?

dfsfsdf [editline]11th July 2016[/editline] sdfwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[QUOTE=Chickenmasher;50689435]dfsfsdf [editline]11th July 2016[/editline] sdfwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww[/QUOTE] you sure you're not drunk?

[QUOTE=Padle;50690278]you sure you're not drunk?[/QUOTE] I found this to be a clear minded and quality post.

[QUOTE=ricoben3;50689275]What kind of incentives did you give?[/QUOTE] I had a few hiscores, one of the categories was top donation. Nobody made hiscore :( also a little chat flair of a dollar sign. nothing fancy. I figured the game was competitive and had a hiscore system, doing anything to augment someone's score based on their donator status would be kind of fucked so I didn't.