Collect Donations from Your Web Site with the Honor System
You work hard contributing to the Web, and you provide a valuable service. Amazon lets you put out a tip jar.
Most independent personal web sites are a labor of love rather than money. If you’re providing a valuable service to your readers, though, there’s no harm in asking them to pitch in to help you cover the cost of your time and effort. Amazon has extended their Marketplace platform so you can add this feature to your site. Here’s how it works:
You create a page at Amazon (called a PayPage) that describes who you are and why you’re asking for donations.
You add a link to this page from your site using either a standard text link or a graphic that Amazon provides (called a Paybox).
Visitors visit this page and send money using their existing Amazon account information.
Amazon collects a $0.15 processing fee and 15% of the donation for providing the service, sending the rest directly to your bank account.
The first step to asking for donations is joining Amazon’s program. You can do this from the Amazon Honor System home page (http://amazon.com/honor/). Just click “Join Now” from that page to start the enrollment process. The enrollment is nearly identical to being approved for Amazon Payments [Hack #49]. You confirm your account’s credit card for identity verification, accept the participation agreement (https://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/help/participation-agreement.htm), and add checking account information so Amazon ...