#133 Starting a PayPal Account for Donations

Unemployed people are people too, so it should not come as a surprise that they like money. Whether it comes from the government or the friends and family they’ve lied to in order to score some cash, the quest for more money without having to work is as continuous as it is urgent. After a few months of exhausting their options, the unemployed eventually turn to complete strangers to begrudgingly supply them with money.

While panhandling has normally been associated with the homeless, the recession has taken begging for money to the internet. This phenomenon is not limited to those Nigerian spam emails asking for money, or scammers on Craigslist trying to fool already desperate renters into nice places with prices too good to be true. Instead, unemployed people are using all mediums of the internet to randomly let strangers know that they have opened up a PayPal account and are gladly accepting donations – preferably from a bank account because credit card transactions cost money.

Usually, the unemployed will test their luck by sharing their hardships in forums, on Facebook, or the unemployment blog they set up specifically to detail their life sans job. Shortly afterwards, as they start to teach themselves how to utilize the internet to their benefit, a PayPal donation button or link will appear in various forms, each one slightly different from the other to attract different kinds of potential donators. At first, the button serves as a silent request for money – but as a day or two goes without a single donation, the unemployed will be more vocal about the PayPal account’s existence:

“Hi readers, some of you may have noticed the PayPal button on the sidebar. Just a friendly reminder that this site doesn’t run itself! So if you guys want to keep reading about my day-to-day unemployment, I would greatly appreciate it if you could take the time to make a donation. All donations welcome!”

When this approach doesn’t work, the unemployed resort to making their PayPal donation buttons bigger and bigger until they take up more of the screen than the actual content. Then they start adding a donation link in their email signatures and hit up people they haven’t communicated with in years, all in hopes that someone, anyone will finally click and donate something worthwhile. When the unemployed claim that all donations are welcome, they’re lying. They only want substantial donations, preferably ones that trump their unemployment checks – anything that will help them pay off their smartphone bill or fund a luxury vacation. It is their hope that readers will enjoy their site so much that they will gladly give money away to a complete stranger, not quite understanding that those readers are probably also jobless. When all else fails, a black marker and a scrap of cardboard may be the next best bet.

Tags: creative money making, panhandling, paypal donations, recession, things to do when unemployed