In lieu of receiving my very first donation (thanks to Nathan from Nathy’s Place!), I have created a brand new system to thank these generous donors. As you may have noticed, I added a “Donations” page to the top of my homepage. On this new page, you will find a basic overview of my new donations “Thank You” system.
From the Donations page:
“Donations to BenjaminCass.Com are extremely appreciated. If you liked a particular post or would like to thank Ben for his hard blogging efforts, you can click the “Buy Me A [Root] Beer” button in the sidebar and proceed to the Paypal donation page.
Any amount helps pay the hosting bill at the end of the month
Thanks!
In addition to helping out Ben financially and showing him your thanks, your generous donation will not go unnoticed. For each donation you make, you will receive a personal “Thank You” image that will display your name, website, and amount donated that will show up on this page (you get a backlink!). Donations can be made anonymous, email me if you wish for this to be the case. Please show your true appreciation by not donating anything less than $0.50 if you can afford it. Thanks again! :D”
I realize that some of you readers may be thinking that I am offering this incentive for the sole purpose of getting people to donate, however, this is not the case. I am implementing this system to show the sincerity of my appreciation for your time and donations. My parents always taught me to write thank you notes after someone put time, money, or effort into me, so I figured that giving the donor a formal thank you note on my site with a link back to their site is sufficient. I am expecting to see this system implemented into many other blogs with a donation option (I’ve already seen two of my readers switch to this system since my creation of it!). The name of this system? DoTyNotes v2.0 (Donation Thank You Notes)- This is the new “Thank You” note… and I’m proud to be the one to start it! Thanks again! 
–Benjamin Cass, BenjaminCass.Com, Copyright 6/16/2007
Below is an example of one of my “Thank You” notes:
Popularity: 38% [?]
Thanks Ben. It’s a nice system and I’m thinking of making it into a bit of a PHP script for my blog. Maybe I’ll wait until I’m a bit bigger :p
Thanks for the link