GitHub Sponsors was launched five years ago. For several years it was available only in a limited number of countries, but two years ago I could also join. I got a few sponsors, but nothing substantial came out of it. Now I'd like to invest some time an energy understanding it and trying to figure out how could I increase the monthly sponsorship I receive.
For this I am going to do some research and publish my findings as a series of posts here on DEV.to.
Discussion
I would definitely be interested in your opinion as well. Check the questions at the end of this article.
You
If you are an open source developer who would like to get sponsors or who would like to increase the number of sponsors you have, I hope the posts will help you too accomplish this.
If you use open source projects and would like to give back by sponsoring some of the developers I hope that these post will help you to find the right candidates for yourself or for your company.
You can certainly start by sponsoring me 😁
What do others say?
Let's start by finding some posts on DEV.to related to GitHub Sponsors
The most interesting one I found was this one from 3 years ago:
and then an update of it from Dec 26, 2023:
A couple of takeaways:
- I am encouraged, you can get income via Github sponsors
azu, the author received $14,600 in 2023.
Create tiers for sponsorship.
Think about direct benefits the sponsor might get from the sponsorship.
Think about long-term vs. short-term benefits.
My thoughts
Working on Open Source projects or publishing articles is a very different activity for me than working for a client. The latter has clear dead-lines with clear goals. For my Open Source activity I know I don't want to promise any specific work to be done and definitely not with some dead-line.
On the other hand I have several project and it might be interesting to know which one is more important for my sponsors. Specifically I use several programming languages (mostly Rust, Python, and Perl) and it might be interesting to let the sponsors encourage me to work and write about a specific language.
How to find someone to sponsor?
Don't look any further, just sponsoring me and get over with it. 😀
Alternatively visit the GitHub Sponsors page and click on "See your top dependencies" to arrive to the Explore GitHub Sponsors page. For me it list "87 developers who maintain your dependencies", strangely, however the first person writes mostly npm and I hardly use Node.
So I guess this is one way people will find who to sponsor. This will not work for me as I am more of an application developer and blogger so people won't find me listed here.
Then there are a number of Rust developers and more JavaScript developers. I guess I'll have to take at my repositories to see where do I have Node code that makes these people show up in the list for me.
What about you?
- Do you sponsor open source projects? Which one? Why? How did you decide? Please share your thoughts and links to the projects.
- If you don't sponsor open source projects, what stops you from doing so?
- If you are an Open Source developer who receives sponsorships, what advice would you give?
Follow me / Sponsor me
If you'd like to read more such posts, don't forget to upvote this one, to follow me here on DEV.to and to sponsor me via GitHub Sponsors.
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