Donate & Download Day is OVER!

Although the Pay-What-You-Want Day is over, the good news is that the products are still available and dirt cheap at the WanderLearn shop! For example, you can get all the digital products that you see on the right for just $5, if you buy the hardcover. Many people donated $10-25 for those products, so they're still a steal at the WanderLearn shop.

How did the Donate & Download Day go?

It surprised me how many people were checking their computers on Christmas Day! People donated anywhere from 1 cent to $25.

If you compare the value of products downloaded with the value of the donations, then people were, on average, giving me 15% of the value of the products. That's $6.73 for $45 worth in products.

That might depress someone who has worked hard to write a book, record an audiobook, make videos, and has no other source of income. However, as I said when I announced the Donate & Download Day, it's not about the dollars. It's about the pennies! Seriously, thanks to a few generous souls, I'm happy with the experiment!

There were 6 reasons why I did a Pay-What-You-Want Day

1. Trail magic! It's the 6^th principle in Hike Your Own Hike—give, give, give! Being altruistic is one of the 7 secrets to getting the most out of life!

2. Test human nature! I'm curious to see how people will behave. How many will download it? How much will they donate?

3. Reach out to the skeptics! I'll never pay $10 for Lady Gaga's album or the Twilight book. But I would buy them for $1, just to see what all the fuss is about. If I was amazed, I'd buy something else from them at full price. You may feel the same way about the crap I produce.

4. Connect with the poor (or cheap)! You may believe that my audiobook is worth at least $25, but you're flat broke. So donate what you can without fear of offending me and just help me to...

5. Spread the word! By making the Hike Your Own Hike message more accessible, it becomes more viral. The more people who join the WanderLearn community, the better!

6. The first experiment was good! I promised myself that if the first Donate & Download Day went well, then I would do it again. Many donated $10-25 partly because they love such Pay-What-You-Want systems and understand that they can only work if people are fair or generous. In their honor, I'm doing it again.

Therefore, while a bunch of Harvard MBAs may say that letting people set their own price is a bad business move, what the hell do those idiots know anyway?

Will there be another Donate and Download Day?

Maybe, but it will probably be a 24-hour event, which will occur sometime in 2011. Therefore, to get the alert, go to the Contact page, and subscribe to my Newsletter, my RSS feed, and/or connect with me on Facebook / Twitter!

But why wait? Just pick up the digital products at the WanderLearn shop now for $5 when you buy the hardcover!