I've had thousands of downloads on my site and until today I only received one donation. It was something I expected but it is still a bit of a disencouraging and leaves me with little motivation
It can be very de-motivating when that happens. I'm afraid you're discovering an unpleasant truth about the world -- that few people will donate for a program if they can get it for free.
(However you may find that those that do are pretty special and interesting people who sometimes become friends).The good news is that even when people don't donate it doesn't mean they don't really appreciate and like what you are doing -- so your work is still appreciated.
It just means that donating for software is still something that most people don't consider and can't be bothered to do. The situation has been made much worse since so much software is now funded by advertisements, because people have come to believe that everything should be free and funded by delivering advertisements to people, and with the advent of mobile "App Stores" where people don't expect to ever have to pay more than a couple of dollars for a program, etc. If you are curious you can read the article I wrote in 2006 about some of these issues, "When Do Users Donate?
Experiments with Donationware: Ethical Software, Work Equalization, Temporary Licenses, Collective Bargaining, and Microdonations":
https://www.donation...der.com/Articles/OneYou will have to figure out how you want to handle this, and where it fits in to how you want to make money and spend your time.
The only thing I can tell you is not to judge the "value" of and appreciation for what you make based on the amount you receive in donations. Decide what goals you want to achieve with your work -- wheter it's to produce good software to share with the world, or make money, or some combination of lots of things. But don't rely on something as fickle as people's donations as your motivation.
I say ll this mostly for others who might be reading this thread, because one can tell already from the work you've done on this program and the enthusiasm you've shown already that you are part of the family of self-motivated real programmers who couldn't stop programming even if you wanted to. To you I say, yes, it sucks that people don't donate more. Take a moment to curse out the world, then shrug it off, find an alternate way to make a living, and keep enjoying programming.
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