This isn’t a story I made up. This is my inbox. Every few weeks, my phone pings with a donation notification. For a split second, I feel that little spark of gratitude: someone appreciated the work on mariushosting. Then I open it: *€0.10* or *€0.01* cents. I’ve written about this before. Multiple times. And yet they keep coming.
Sometimes there’s a message attached. Once it said: “Here’s what your work is worth, loser.” Another time: “Thanks for the free help, idiot.”
And some go further. I’ve received messages telling me they’re going to post about me on Reddit that I’m “just a guy begging for money,” that “nobody will believe” me, that they’ll make sure everyone knows what kind of person runs this site. Think about what they’re really saying: *I’m going to destroy your reputation, and no one will ever believe you because you’re nobody.*
Let me be very clear about something: a 1-cent payment is not a donation. It’s an insult with a transaction fee attached.
So I refund every single one of them. I will not keep money that was sent to humiliate me. But here’s the part nobody thinks about: every refund takes my time, time I should be spending writing the articles that help thousands of people a month. And because of payment processing fees, every refunded cent actually costs me money out of my own pocket. They pay one cent to mock me, and I end up paying more than that just to give it back.
While they’re spending their evening laughing, planning how to humiliate me publicly, I’m losing real money and real hours. On top of the nights I already spend writing free guides for people. They count on me being alone. They count on there being nobody to contradict them.
And then there are the other ones. The ones who don’t even pay the cent.
They find my email address and spend twenty minutes of their evening writing things like: “Your article was helpful, but asking for donations destroyed your credibility. Remove that button or I’ll never come back.”
Think about that for a moment. While I’m spending my nights writing free tutorials that save people hundreds of euros in consultancy fees, a man somewhere in the world invested part of his finite life to angrily demand that I work for free permanently while offering absolutely nothing in return. Not a thank you. Not a cent. Just the insult, delivered with the confidence of someone who believes my time is a public utility.
I answer those emails politely. Every single one. Then I go back to writing the next guide for them too.
This site has no ads. No sponsors. No affiliate links. No tracking. No AI.
Nobody forces you to be here, and nobody stops you from leaving.
If you’re one of the people who donates a single cent just to mock me, I see you, I refund you, and you’re not as funny as you think.
If you’re one of the people who found this site useful and quietly moved on, I’m not angry at you.
But me, Marius, I am asking you, honestly, person to person:
Which side are you on?
The mockers have already made their choice.
The only thing that keeps this site alive, the only thing that ever has, is the quiet army of decent people who throw in a little and simply say “thank you, keep going.” They are outnumbered by the mockers. They always have been.
But They Are The Reason Everyone Can Still Read These Guides For Free.
This post was updated on Friday / September 18th, 2026 at 10:42 PM