DSP Robotics Support

k brown wrote:My website is a Weebly freebie - I think it has those options, but you might have use a paid site, but their minimal one is quite low-priced.

I looked at Weebly, and it seems there is an app that you can use. It's fine with Paypal, but I'm quite shocked about credit cards - it seems I have to pay fees for every transaction that's done via credit card. I live in Germany, where credit cards are not as popular as in the USA, but it seems odd that those credit card banks let me pay for a donation of one of their customers!

Those who have donation options on their sites - what's your experience? Do you reduce options to PayPal only, or do you handle the fees from credit cards?

Hey,
Cool and handy project!
IMHO, best way to go (depending on your connection speed) is to host your website yourself and to use paypal
You have automatic dynamic DNS actualization in routers, or use a service like dynDNS, and install an Apache server (with swamp for example) on an old (and slow pc, doesn't really matter if you have no animated graphic or videos on your pages) and you're good to go...

Ok, so I did some research, and oh my, is that a complicated topic. What I found out is true for Germany, it is likely to be different wherever you live.

The monster we created is called tax law. In the German tax law, there simply is no such thing as a donation for me, a private person. Donations are reserved exclusivley for charity organisations. When I create a website and place a donation button on it, that's simply taxable income, and I have to register it.

Of course that's such a nonsense, a few bucks over the course of a few days via a donation button, but I have to go through several hours of tax registering with the tax office. No way. (I would really like to know how Martin handled it!)

There is one loophole though. PayPal.me links. Those are considered private givings, a bit like bestowals, that are tax exempt. Of course that's not nearly as confortable as a donation button, but I think I will make use of it. For you it will be one or two more clicks and an additional webpage to open, but I hope yopu are fine with it.

During the weekend, I will release the first part of the package here in this thread (I still haven't set up a webpage, see my research^^). I hope you will like it and appreciate the work!

The first part of the package is here: http://www.dsprobotics.com/support/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=43983