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Many years ago, before I ever asked anyone for a donation, a reader spontaneously sent me $100 by PayPal because “a few short paragraphs on your website just saved me from wasting hundreds on an irrelevant therapy.”

“Wow!” I thought. “I should probably encourage that kind of thing.” And so this page was born.

I have been publishing best-of-breed articles for 20 years now, with the same idealistic priorities and values the whole time:

If you like that formula, please make any one-time donation, or become a member for $6/month or $60/year. Choose any amount with PayPal, or use the green buttons to make a direct payment with major credit cards or Apple Pay.

Head shot of author Paul Ingraham, handsome devil, tidy dark hair, thick eyebrows, and a short goatee, in a black suit jacket and a nice blue shirt.

Paul Ingraham
PainScience.com Publisher
Vancouver CANADA

[email protected]
778-968-0930

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Paying in your own (non-USD) currency is always cheaper! My prices are set slightly lower than current exchange rates, but most cards charge extra for conversion.

Example: as a Canadian, if I pay $19.95 USD, my credit card converts it at a high rate and charges me $26.58 CAD. But if I select Canadian dollars here, I pay only $24.95 CAD.

Why so different? If you pay in United States dollars (USD), your credit card will convert the USD price to your card’s native currency, but the card companies often charge too much for conversion — it’s a way for them to make a little extra money, of course. So I offer my customers prices converted at slightly better than the current rate.

   

Why start at $6 USD? I’d prefer $3 or $5… but fees & hackers.+It’s weird, but $5 online purchases are rejected by credit card companies at an extraordinary rate, because that price point is strongly associated with fraud (specifically with the phenomenon of “card testing” — bad guys testing stolen card numbers with small purchases). And under $5, the fees start to defeat the purpose of the donation. So $6 is the minimum viable price point for a “micro”-transaction.

A reader explains why his generous donation was a “no brainer”

Greg was an occasional PainScience.com reader for years before I finally provided a donation option, which he used as soon as he saw it. Here are his thoughts on why he chose to support this project:

The option to send you a meaningful sum of money was a no brainer. Your website has saved me multiple thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in unnecessary professional treatments.

For me, the key benefit of the veritable treasure trove of material you have provided is not so much the money saved, but more the time and demoralising inconvenience of incompetent or inefficacious professional treatments.

As a former elite track sprinter, I would have wasted more than $10,000, but, more painfully, thousands of hours wasted on treatments that simply did not work.  The time to make the appointment, the time to get to the appointment, the time to wait (and the therapist is running 30 minutes late), the time then spent on inefficacious treatment … and so on and so on. And then one actually has to pay for the privilege of all that! Mentally debilitating to say the least.

Your material is succinct, well written, quickly provable (or not), easy to access and …  free.  A paradox in the extreme.  My donations will continue, as time saved for me is not only money saved, but efficacious treatments allow me to compound the result and produce more income-earning opportunities.  A virtuous circle has replaced a vicious cycle! Magnificent!

Greg Hughes