Donations

I’d like to start a regular donation to Justin guitar but was wondering if I am already doing this by subscribing to the songs app? Or does that money go somewhere else?
ET

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Hi Elizabeth, and good on you :smiley:
First of all, just by using his website and interacting positively with community members and content, you are actively supporting Justin’s business. By purchasing merch/subscriptions, he will receive a (presumably vaying) percentage of that to fund the project as well as his personal income.
If you set up a donation, he receives all that money to do with as he pleases, so it is probably the most efficient way.
Before responding to this question, I thought I’d include the link for ‘Donations’, but couldn’t find one. I used the Search function and still no luck :thinking:
Eventually, I went on to the main website and sure enough, there at the bottom of the Welcome page, is an orange Donate button :smiley:
One of the things I like about Justin’s approach is the lack of ‘Gimme your money’ approach, but adding a simple Donate button at the bottom of the Community webpage would make a lot of sense to me. He has over a quarter of a million registered users and many grateful, engaged members. It shouldn’t make it hard to help :laughing:
One of the mods might wish to raise at an admin meeting @Richard_close2u?

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I’d echo everything @brianlarsen has said - all products come with costs. In the case of the App, there will be royalty fees, development staff, hosting etc.I’m sure there is some ‘profit’ left, but donations will be free of those costs.

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Elizabeth, the Song App product is developed and run by Musopia, in partnership with Justin. The money is collected by Musopia. I have no idea of the commercial terms of the relationship between JustinGuitar and Musopia. I imagine that JustinGuitar does receive some payment from Musopia.

As @brianlarsen said, there are many ways to support JustinGuitar, from donations, to purchases, and even viewing, liking, and subscribing on YouTube probably helps to a small extent (again, I have no idea of how monetisation works on YouTube).

Brian, interesting though re the reference to donations on the Community site. From a practical perspective, I have no idea if we would be able to have such a button. We are constrained by what the platform supports. That aside, my immediate reaction is that there is sufficient visibility on the main site and maybe such a button is too prominent. But no harm in exploring the idea. Let’s see what @Richard_close2u and @LievenDV think here, and can consider raising at a Team Meeting with Justin.

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That is wonderful Elizabeth, good vibes to you.

You can set up a regular donation payment.
At the bottom of every page of the main website there is a bright orange Donate button.

You will see an option to make regular donations.

App subscriptions go, in the first instance, to an App store (apple or android) then on to Musopia, the App developer. Justin has a business arrangement with Musopia of course, what proportion each receives I do not know. They do need to pay publishers of all the songs for the permitted use of copyright material.
To answer your question - yes! You are already sending monies to Justin through that subscription. You can top that up with donations if you wish - or through the purchase of other products too. Some of the products and merchandise is sold and / or distributed by 3rd party outlets (Andertons, Amazon etc.) so of course Justin only receives a percentage of those sales.

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Hey @eejjtt

When you subscribe to the app, consider it a regular subscription to any service. As in any healthy partnership, it needs to be a win-win for both Musopia and Jusin but do know Justin invests a lot of it back into further developments as there is some custom stuff going on.

By all means, subscribe to the app as it is a great product tool that has helped a lot of people so far.

If you want to do something for Justin specifically, a direct donation is probably the more “direct” thing to do.

The team takes care to have “Donation” buttons around the site, newsletters etc but always with some attention for not overdoing it with dontion spam.

I always remember the easy shortlink: justinguitar.com/donate

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Like David, I am unsure if the forum software allows this. Positionally speaking, I wonder, how many people scroll fully to the very bottom of the Community pages?

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Guess that’s down to your navigation preferences. I tend not to launch from the list of “New & Unread Topics” but drop down to

So I can select from either Unread or New, as is my want at the time. So a Donate button just to the right of the category “highlight”
image
would work if its technically possible. It would be just another hyperlink, just like the category is on the bottom line anyway.

Food for thought but hey I might be a lonely navigator doing it like Frank S. :thinking:

:sunglasses:

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Everyone singing off the same hymn sheet on this one :smiley:
There’s nothing wrong with the community pages and it’s probably because I spend all my time here, rather than on the mothership, that I had difficulty finding the button :roll_eyes:
I just thought if it were easy to pop a Donate hyperlink on the Community homepage, some extra shekels might wing their way to our Guru, not least because in the community the topic of donating raises its head every couple of months and Monkey see, monkey do :wink:

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Just pop the donation link at the top of the page.

I think people who use the community understand how the whole process works, so wouldn’t be averse to seeing it at the top of the page.

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I have paid for memberships in other music learning sites but have found that Justin’s is what has resonated with my needs. Because of that, I have a reminder on my calendar to donate a set amount to Justin. I COULD use the “MONTHLY” feature of the donation, but I don’t like to do that as a basic rule, so I just do it on my own. Keeps me aware of my spending, I suppose. I suggest that if you find value, you should give value if you can. If you can’t, then don’t, no worries.

It is always nice when a thread comes up about donations. I have written before that one of the things I appreciate about Justin is his “low pressure” approach to the site financing.

Heck, I am still getting spam from some guitar learning sites that I nearly glanced at 2 or more years ago. The deluge of sale pitches from some possibly decent online sites is a definite turn off.

I am a sporadic donator. Also not liking to have too many scheduled payments. I have purchased several products, that app for my first two years, tabs (totally worth it), blues licks, other justin apps, some backing tracks and so on. All are good buys and do support Justin.

Donations, I try to do yearly. I am behind. So thank you for the reminder.

On your dashboard when you log into the website, there is a place that logs you prior donations and easily allows you to duplicate your last or make another donation.

Just as an example, my classical guitar course (which does allow me to send videos in for review) costs around $380 per year. I will probably switch to another course that is also on the donation model when my current year ends. Not utilizing it enough, although it is good. There is a “Total chord Mastery” course out there at $79 per month! And I can’t tell how many months it might take to complete…

So whatever we donate to Justin, it is in our control and according to our ability. This program is totally worth it and more.

My plan is to donate in another month or so when I get a few bonuses payed out.

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Thank you everyone for your excellent feedback. I have decided to donate directly to Justin because I feel that the app is something I purchased for myself and as I use Justin’s website almost daily to learn and teach others ( as a volunteer ) I feel I need to pay it back in some way. My students love my teaching style but I owe it all to Justin. And I do acknowledge this to my classes. Cheers Liz

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I donate about every other month and thought I’d bump this up so it’s at the top, even briefly, for those who can and want to donate.

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