Can you spare a nickel?

Joey

Hi, I’m Joey. I’m conducting an experiment to see if I can raise enough money to buy myself a MacBook. Here’s the catch: I’m planning to raise the money entirely in nickels. Doing the math, the roughly $1,600 it will take to buy a MacBook works out to 32,000 nickels. As of November 12, 2011, I have 7,618. Only 24,382 to go. Sweet!

Nickel

So here’s the deal: I’m shamelessly asking you to toss five cents into my PayPal account. Let me be perfectly clear: this money will not go to charity or a non-profit of any kind and is most certainly not tax-deductible. Your nickel will go straight into my pocket and you’ll get nothing in return for this. But hey, why do you care? It’s only a nickel. And that’s the whole point: I’m not asking for much—just a few seconds of your time and a nickel.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve got a PayPal account, follow these instructions to throw a nickel in my change cup:

  1. Log into your PayPal account
    I’ve purposefully avoided hyperlinking to PayPal since that’s a common phishing tactic (see Wikipedia › Phishing for more information); if you’ve got a PayPal account I’m assuming you know how to log in
  2. Make sure you’ve got a positive balance
    This is important; if you use a credit card your entire nickel will go toward PayPal fees, which obviously won’t do me any good
  3. Click “Send Money”
    1. Type nickels@joeyday.com into the “To” field
    2. Type 0.05 into the “Amount” field
    3. Click the “Personal” tab
      This is also important; any other choice will cause a fee
  4. Review the info on the next page and click “Send Money”

For more information about when fees are assessed on PayPal transactions and why steps 2 and 3(c) are important, see PayPal’s Free vs. Fees help document.

Thanks for your help!

—
Joey Day

P.S.

Can I ask one more favor? This will only work if lots of people see this page. Will you help me spread the word by emailing this page to just two other people? Or, even better, will you post this page to your favorite social network? This will go a long way toward helping me reach my goal. Cheers!

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