GitHub Sponsors - A series on giving an receiving 💰
Tags: github, opensource, discuss
Published: 2024-04-20 13:21:21

---
title: GitHub Sponsors - A series on giving an receiving 💰
published: true
description: A series about getting paid and finding worthy developer to pay to via GitHub Sponsors
tags: github, opensource, discussion
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# Use a ratio of 100:42 for best results.
# published_at: 2024-04-20 12:22 +0000
series: github-sponsors
---

[GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/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](https://github.com/sponsors/szabgab/).

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](https://github.com/sponsors/szabgab/) 😁


## 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:

{% embed https://dev.to/azu/looking-back-on-two-years-of-github-sponsors-e0n %}

and then an update of it from Dec 26, 2023:

{% embed https://dev.to/azu/my-github-sponsors-revenue-2023-1m3d %}

A couple of takeaways:

* I am encouraged, you can get income via Github sponsors
* [azu](https://github.com/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](https://github.com/sponsors/szabgab/) and get over with it. 😀

Alternatively visit the [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/) page and click on "See your top dependencies" to arrive to the [Explore GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/explore) 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](https://github.com/sponsors/szabgab/).