Paypal's payment system is fantastic. It provides a simple way to provide a large number of payment options to your customers with a very low cost per transaction - far below what your bank and the majority of other merchants can (or rather, do) provide.
One of the things they provide is a "Donation" functionality that you can stick on your page to allow visitors to send funds to you voluntarily.
You've probably seen this before, and probably will see more & more as the appeal of getting cash for doing nothing reaches more site owners. But does having such functionality profit the owner? Or does it hurt the site more and drive people away?
Firstly, it's almost impossible to get people to give you there cash for free. Even developers who write free software and offer a donation button will see terrible returns compared to selling there software (hence the increased popularity in freemium based pricing). Having a site, which already has advertising on it, and then a suggestion to send money to the author at most times is just insulting and akin to begging.
Thanks to the huge number of sites on the web, there is no shortage of variety. Visitors will stick around for half a minute and then click through to the next half minute distraction. Unless their lives are significantly enriched by that half minute on your site, you're not going to see a penny.
Unless you can increase the perceived value of your site, you should not put a donation button on it. Doing so is a slap in the face to say that you're too lazy to spend the effort creating something that is of value that should be financially rewarded. If you want to get cash, make something worthwhile and sell it.
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