How to Increase Traffic while Donating a Good Cause?

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UPDATE: This little experiment is at its end and made 9 comments. For the month of October I will donate the usual amount + the money for the comments. I would like to thank everyone who participated in this try-out. Although this wasn’t the biggest success, I will keep donating to good causes and I would like to ask you to do the same.

A blog or website is -in essence- a medium which thrives on interaction. To increase interaction on your website you need more traffic and we have several ways to achieve this (implementation of SEO, using all kinds of plugins, quality of content and so on). Although these things are important and absolutely necessary for every project, I want to try something else besides the obvious.

In my efforts to become a good citizen I’ve been donating small amounts of money to good causes now and then, but due to the worldwide economical problems this has been cut down to a minimum. I’ve been telling myself that this was all because of the crisis but in fact the crisis doesn’t really affect me personally, nevertheless I donate less (call it a weird unconscious thought for financial self preservation). I talked to the ceo of a non-profit, for which I developed the company website, and she told me that donations have drastically decreased since a few months now. For a non-profit company, highly dependent on gifts, this makes a huge difference and endangers the very existence of a lot of these companies. That’s why I came up with the following idea.

In order to donate more, to increase traffic to my blog and to start a new experiment, I will donate 0,20 euro per comment (useful comments and pingbacks found on www.paulolyslager.com) to a good cause of my choice. From the 10th of October 2009 ’till the end of November 2009 I will count the amount of comments and donate the money to bzn Atlas. This rather small non-profit help out children who are mentally or physically abused and who experienced domestic violence throughout their childhood.

Paul Olyslager

Paul is the creator, editor and most regular writer of paulolyslager.com. He's also working as UX Lead for Home24, a leading online shop for furniture and home accessories, based in Berlin, Germany. Read all about Paul or find him on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.


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No responses yet to “How to Increase Traffic while Donating a Good Cause?”

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  2. Jenna says

    Want an example of a great tool for supporting causes? Check out http://www.cafegive.com, where a portion of every purchase goes directly to supporting the non-profits you love. How sweet is that? Get what you need and help make the world a better place. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

  3. @Jenna: looks great indeed! Do you have an affiliate program, except the widget?

  4. Hal says

    Another creative idea Paul. Good luck with this.

  5. Thanks Hal, but it looks like I’ll have to donate the fixed amount of money… not really enough comments :).
    As long as people donate to good causes, I’m a happy guy.

  6. Hal says

    @Paul Olyslager:

    I have begun to notice a lack of reciprocation in commenting. The top bloggers have comments piled on top of comments. In fact, I see this on Twitter as well – I follow someone and rarely do they follow me.

    You have a well designed blog with good content. I am a photographer, and will subscribe to your blog. I believe you have something to say.

    I hope to launch a new blog this week – I have a couple of others that just don’t seem to attract attention. This time I’m writing for myself. Period. I’m not going to bother much with promotion for a while. But I’ve made a decision about one thing – quid pro quo. If I help others with promotion, I hope at least a few will reciprocate. If I don’t see that happening, well…

    Again, the best of luck and I’ll be back often.

  7. @Hal: Thank you for the nice comment, let me know when you launched your new blog.

  8. iresha says

    Here is a comment so you can donate more!

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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