Dear friends,
I just hate PayPal. For many reasons, but one of them is this recurrent problem: the “donate” button I created following the exact instructions given by PP (the one posted on the left side of this page) seems to redirect to a page to join PP and not directly to the page to enter the donation amount. I tried several times to re-create that button, but each time I get the same result. I get the feeling that PP uses *my* donation button to increase *their* membership.
Does anybody know the way to prevent that from happening?
Check out this guys’s button: http://kenrockwell.com/
It works correctly and takes you to the correct page (also his button says “make a donation” while mine says “donate”). He also offers a “subscribe button”. Should I do that too (without, of course, restricting access to anything)?
Generally, the issue of donations has been a huge irritant for me because, alas, PayPal seems to be the only more or less working one. Flattr was a complete failure (less than 10 bucks in many months), Bitcoin is way to complex for me and for most people (sorry, I do not have the time to research that topic), I even ended up suggesting Amazon gift cards by email and cash by snail mail as an option.
It really would help me tremendously if somebody could suggest a way to accept donations which would be easy and convenient both for donors and for me. Initially, when I put up a donation button, donations were coming in more or less regularly, but apparently people are getting frustrated with PayPal as the number of readers is stable (or slightly going up over the past weeks) but the number of donations is going down. Unless this is a case of “donor fatigue”, which is possible, or unless people don’t like the contents of this blog, which I doubt, I must be doing something wrong (as it painfully obvious, I am an extremely clumsy fund-raiser…).
So any suggestions would really be most welcome!
Thanks in advance,
The Saker
Saker Message:
Dear Saker,
Here is another way for donations. Every time someone buys anything from Amazon.com they go through your site, and you get some %.
Here is an example:
Support Scott’s Sponsors!
Buy @ Amazon via this Link
I am not sure when you redeem from Amazon.com, they have to know your identity or not. I guess when you are redeeming the Amazon Gift Cards for buying stuff and shipping it to somewhere.
Best regards,
Mohamed.
Saker, you are spot on about your negative feelings for PayPal. I almost never donate via PayPal if there are other options for me. Yes, there probably IS a correlation between your donation income — or lack thereof — and PayPalophobia. If you build it (an alternative), they (donations) will come.
Удачи!
Saker
Paypal is screwing with your link.
I’ve checked other charities and Truth warriors I support and all of them are normal straight to the donation page and not routed to the Paypal Marketing crap.
Contact them and get them to direct link as before.
These Silicon Valley billionaire Elites are all in the Hegemon’s camp. Very big Cult. And LGBT is their ideology, so you know they are not happy with Russia, you or us.
Setup with Amazon for Payments. Payment button same as Paypal’s but uses Amazon accounts of donors.
https://payments.amazon.com/merchant
They work directly with CIA, providing Cloud services, so it makes things even easier if they want to screw with you. But it may be an option.
(They run the world. It will take Russia and China a little while longer to set up a new Internet where we can have some Freedom).
It takes you to the PP where you log in.where is the problem?
Dear Saker,
I like the way Ancient Faith Radio (an Orthodox Christian Internet radio station) handles their donations.
http://www.ancientfaith.com
Saker,
Here’s another online, reasonable service.
https://gobluefire.com
Upon clicking the donate button, I am taken to a page filled mainly with a large marketing banner. At the top-left of the page there are 4 links.
Buy
Sell
Send
Business
If I click on ‘Send’, then a panel is displayed to enter the data to send you the donation.
I would suggest to just add directions explaining this next to your donate button.
I quit using paypal years ago, due to them stealing money from me, so I really don’t know how their interface works today. Sorry I can not be of any more help.
Saker – two solutions
1. PayPal – I think you may just need a trusted webmaster type person to go into your paypal account and set up the right link and configuration. I’ve done PayPal many times – sadly I truly don’t have time to volunteer at present.
Change your password to a temporary one and find someone you trust to set it up. It trips up lots of people but it’s not a sinister plot against you ;)
2. There are many alternative payment systems – the one posted by Larchmonter looks interesting, I don’t know it personally.
For what I’ve seen, even in Ken Rockwell page, there is at least one field (with the sum of the paiement) that is pre-filled before being redirected to PayPal.
Dedefensa, long time ago, tried to go without PayPal, through a bank. It worked so well that one day everything was disrupted and the money lost, first time ever the dedefensa owner said there could be some truth in conspiracy theories. Anyway dedefensa is back to PP and has pre-filled form before PP page, same goes for les-crises.fr.
Just my 2 cents, I would be glad to use your paypal button, it is not possible at the moment but I’m confident it will come, as well as the Donbass victory.
I think the paypal payment page you’re looking for requires you to configure a “merchant account”. It must be configured via a custom payment page, which afaik is tied to their PayPal Payments Standard product which allows direct credit card payment (comes at fee per transaction) – note the section: “What do my customers see?”.
If you’re merely looking for the button which allows to predetermine payment amounts or timely payments, check this page, this should still lead users to a PP login page though.
Slightly offtopic, for the curious:
“I get the feeling that PP uses *my* donation button to increase *their* membership.”
Apparently not only personal accounts, while attempting to identify the page you referred to (kenrockwell) I noticed the following:
Scenario 1
– vineyard donate button > resulted in paypal signup page (+ login page + details pre filled)
– kenrockwell subscribe button > resulted in paypal signup page (+ login page + details pre filled)
The same in both cases, on a computer where I had logged in to Paypal before. But after clearing browser cache:
Scenario 2
– vineyard donate button > resulted in paypal signup page (+ no login page + no details pre filled)
– kenrockwell subscribe button > resulted in its own custom direct checkout page (should be a merchant account then, why did this not show up previously if so?)
Lastly, after logging back to Paypal, when one would expect the same behaviour as in the first scenario, surprisingly we get:
Scenario 3
– vineyard donate button > resulted in paypal signup page (+ login page + details pre filled)
but now
– kenrockwell subscribe button > resulted still in its own custom direct checkout page (hmmm…)
Apparently even “merchants” are not fully benefiting from their upgraded accounts, and when the webpage inconsistency happens to be noticed, when temporarily diverting their traffic, it fallsback to the advertised page behaviour (ie. direct checkout vs signup/login). This goes to show the user tracking power that is generally embedded in the webpages we navigate on, and how more often than not this is done disregarding the user interest.
This may be an option to offer donators.
https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5132-send-or-request-money-with-square-cash
This story gives a bit of credibility.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/11/cash-transfers
I have no experience with this service so I can not endorse it or warn against it. Just something I came across.
Might Saker also post his specifis SWIFT/BSB and AccNumber so people can transfer directly into an account of his? But I personally do not get why web owners don’t do this.
@Larchmonter445 and Saker
in addition to donation setup at https://gobluefire.com they have a wordpress plugin you can use on the new site.
https://github.com/firelit/woocommerce-bluefire-gateway
I just tried the PayPal button and you DO NOT get taken to the send payment part of their site. for me to send you money via PayPal today, using the Donate button on this website, I would have to go to the “send money” area, input your email account, the amount and then Pay.
This is not the same as all the other sites I have used recently. They go directly to the Payment section with your email already entered. My job is to pick the amount and hit Pay.
There is definitely something going on here with this website versus other more mainstream sites.
Saker, what type of Paypal account do you have?
I think that what you are looking at is the difference between a ‘normal’ personal Paypal account and a business account.
A business account costs nothing to set up, has much greater flexibility and the buttons and other furniture are much more configurable.
You may not like PayPal but, frankly, if you want to get money there is nothing better than Paypal, the network effect of having so many outlets and clients means that they have a much greater trust perception than any other provider. I run online businesses and would not imagine using another service.
You will read of people having problems with Paypal but, frankly, when you delve a little deeper you into these cases you will find that almost invariably the complainant was doing something onky-ponky either with clients or with Paypal.
For your simple needs a basic business account is the way to go.
Here’s a signup link: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/accept-payments-online
looked at your code and noticed the problem right away. sending you an email now with the fix.
Hello Dears,
I agree with Larchmonter445:
“Paypal is screwing with your link.”
I’ve happily donated to this blog a few times with no problem, the link directed me straight.
*they* are possibly starting to make an evident disturb without turning the entire blog down as it already happened for a short time: too much extremely valuable information for everyone around here :-)
Best Wishes & Regards to you all!
MM
PayPal is a nightmare. Try closing your account. They won’t let you go!
This won’t answer your general user donation issue. However, I suggest you get a Square account for larger donations. It is simply outstanding. You plug a small card reader into your smart phone and swipe a card. You’d need authorization but you can develop a form for that for big donations. Square will come up with something very good in this regard in the future.
No problems, excellent service, and they respond to customer inquiries promptly:
https://squareup.com/
Google ‘Pierre Omidyar Ukraine’. Would this gentleman screw with your Paypal account? I think the answer is obvious.
I will not send cash by snail mail. And of course you probably have a mail cover operation in place. Would you take personal checks? Are money orders OK?
Google ‘Pierre Omidyar Ukraine’. Would this gentleman screw with your Paypal account? I think the answer is obvious.
I will not send cash by snail mail. And of course you probably have a mail cover operation in place. Would you take personal checks? Are money orders OK?
Use Bitcion, it is incredible simple and carries a level of anonymity. All you need to do is generate a wallet on BlockChain.info, which is highly secure, and post your public wallet address somewhere on your blog. If you want more information on Bitcoin you can find it on BlockChain.info
Hi Saker.
As you are moving your servers to Iceland, why not moving your banking there too. Have them setting up a merchant account where we may make donations with credit cards, or transfer through SWIFT etc. Contact some banks there and explains your needs. Then use a debet card for withdrawing funds in the US.
Then just mentioning that the people living in Iceland are descendants of the Vikings, or Varjags that participated in laying the fundation of Kievan Rus. They are Rus too. A fact almost forgotten.
Good luck
Gunnar.
Bitcoin does not need to be difficult. Go to Coinbase and create an account. Follow the easy instructions on how to link your bank account. Post your bitcoin address. Transfer any donations received in your bitcoin Coinbase account to your bank account. If you have a dollar bank account they will arrive as dollars.
This has nothing to do with PayPal or a new service. But it has everything to do why we donate and comment and read and distribute the Saker’s blog.
It’s on Gleb’s blog. In three languages, a video of atrocities by eyewitness, wife of a militia man.
Atrocities
It’s only two little unknown lives, a mother and child, desecrated by madmen, freaks paid for with our tax dollars by our officials.
I think the problem with PP is the link you have in the widget. Looking at the source code the donate links to this url: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr which is PP home page.
Try logging into your account and find the url that links to the donation page for your account.
Hope this helps
Hi Saker,,
Dun use Paypal, majority own by Ebay. Pierre Omidyar founder of Ebay funded the initial Ukraine uprising deposed Viktor Yanukovych. Don’t use Amazon either, they like Walmart, screw the working poor paying peanuts. Beside, like Google spying and collecting personal data to enrich themselves.
USA TODAY 5:50 p.m. EST March 3, 2014
“Website PandoDaily published a story Friday reporting that Omidyar, along with the U.S. government, had bankrolled groups active in opposing the recently toppled government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/03/02/flap-over-omidyar-support-for-ukrainian-group/5948821/
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/01/journalistic-independence/
Kindest Regards
JC
davidius
I use Pay Pal on a lot of places. Both for donations, e.g. the saker and ICH, and buying. It works very well for me.
And, yes I know they are spying, I just don’t care
Saker, the button is working properly now.
was it adding the cmd field or changing the id??
I use Paypal and set it up on other blogs and it works fine, even on wordpress which is delicate in that regards.
If you follow the tutorial below there is no reason why it will not work. Change your paypal into a business account for more options in tweaking your identity if you want, it’s free.
http://www.stramaxon.com/2012/08/paypal-donation-blogger-blogs.html
Hi Saker,
On the orders of Senator Leiberman the then US Senator, Connecticut, PayPal, Amazon and Ebay tried to cut off donations to Wikileaks. The fascists of USA were after Julian A. for revealing USA war crrimes Iraq abd Afghabustab, I will not do any business with them.
Why not accept personal checks via US mail or other countries’ mail? As far as I know, n … s … a.. is not reading our mail.
Cheers,
As an old postage stamp collector, I noticed that the trident symbol used by Right Sector is a copy of the trident symbol on early 1918 – 1920 Ukraine postage stamps, supposedly taken from the coat of arms of the Grand Duke Vladimir of Kiev. Source: Minkus New 1970 World Wide Stamp Catalog, Volume Two.
I don’t understand why you felt it necessary to ditch Flattr.
Even if it doesn’t bring you much money, it has growth potential and it’s simple to use.
All it costs is to register (which you already did) and put a donation button (which is easy).
Ditching it because it didn’t bring much money until now sounds like ragequit to me…
@Anonymous:Ditching it because it didn’t bring much money until now sounds like ragequit to me…
That is exactly what it was. A ragequit. Or frustrationquit. Or disappointmentquit. Guilty as charged :-(
Kind regards,
The Saker
I personaly hate PayPall, not to talk about the owner…..everyone knows who he is
Let’s find some another option because Amazon is the same family like PayPall
This probably isn’t helpful because potential donors most likely don’t use Bitcoin, but ..
Bitcoin os ideal for this kind of situation. Direct international money (in the form of Bitcoin) transmission from “wallet” to “wallet” without needing faith in a third party. But at the receiving end, you would need to use a Bitcoin exchange, or know local Bitcoin users, to convert Bitcoin into local folding money.
I thought i’d mention it, even though it’s probably not a practical suggestion right now.
Patreon.com, http://www.patreon.com,
might be better than PayPal.
Have you or anyone else that reads this blog have any experience with this website:
http://www.cardpaymentoptions.com/