Those of you who do visit my blog on a regular basis will of noticed that the Donate button on the right of the screen has now gone and been replaced with a pledgie button.

There are several reasons I did this, the first is it seems to fit in a bit better with the design of the blog and secondly, this button now gives a anyone wanting to donate, or pledge, to my blog a little extra. Everytime someone uses the button and donates they have the choice of adding their name to a list of those that have helped.

I did have a few donation through the old button, so I’m going to give this one a try over a while and see if it makes any difference.

Many thanks to everyone who has donated to Blazing Minds over the years, thanks to you, I have been able to keep my blog alive

The other day I posted about if you have a donate button on your blog and the comments have been very interesting, so I thought I would continue on the subject but this time with a different outlook on the debate of Donate Buttons.

So I’m going to ask you all something about the side of donating to Blazing Minds, if I was to give away one of our albums to download to each person that donates a minimum amount of say £2.99 would you be more likely to donate to the blog and support my music project? For example you can currently get one of the Remergence EPs for £2.99 you could get that if you wanted

Yes I know this is probably the same as buying an album, but, with a difference that you could decide on the amount you wish to donate it could be more if you so wish.

Then anyone who donates is actually getting a little something back, anyway, let me know what you all think and if it looks good I will update the donate button to something like “Donate to Blazing Minds and get an album download”

We probably all have had one, or we still have a donate button on our blogs and websites, but are they actually worth the space they take up?

Since starting Blazing Minds I’ve always had a PayPal donate button proudly in place in a hope that someone will show their support and click on it and donate whatever they can, in the time it’s been there I think it’s only ever been used twice.

Don’t get me wrong I am so grateful to the two donations made and they covered my hosting for a couple of months, is there any need to keep the button on the blog in the hope or off-chance that some kind-hearted person will click it and say “Here’s a couple of bucks for your wonderful blog”

I suppose with the addition of readers been able to add their Ads to the blog then this I suppose is better than the donation option as these give something back to the person placing an Ad.

But on the other side of things I suppose doing something like sending a reader to my music project and saying donate whatever you can for your support and get an album for your time, might be an incentive for those to make a donation and help me keep the blog running, even helping increase my bandwidth as the blog gets more popular.

So what do you think? Have you got a donation button? Do you think it’s even worth having one on your blog?