I've been running, for the better part of two years a World of Warcraft fan fiction website. I've paid for the entire thing since its induction, but with my retirement from WoW, I've been looking at ways to keep it up without personally dishing money out on it anymore.

Right now, I'm looking at opening up donations, but I have been wondering what legal implications this brought up. I've tried looking it up but I've not managed to find any concrete documents on this.

Mainly, what I'm worried about is one of the following scenarios :

A) Is it illegal to recieve money donations exceding the cost of the website, and keeping the extra for one's self as "payment" for time put in the website?

B) Is it illegal to recieve money donations, but eventually shutting down the website prematurely due to one issue or another that may possibly arise?

While I'm not doing this to make a profit, I simply do not wish to open myself to potential fraud or other criminal accusations.

Nope, none of that stuff can happen to you as long as you make sure people know it's a non-refundable non-tax-deductible gift. Don't use the word "Donation" or at least make sure the word "Gift" is in there more than donation, or something. That'd be the paranoid approach, though. Otherwise, no one's going to **** with you.

Someone might stuff you into a locker for writing fan fiction, though. So I wouldn't exactly say no one is going to **** with you.

I'm better with my fists than I am at writing anyways.

And if they want to **** with me...

These (*shows fists*) are not the hammer.

The hammer is my penis.

Is that the new meme?

"I'm Jepman!"
"The hammer is my penis!"

Make a poll.

The only person smiting anyone with metaphorical fists is Franz Kafka (who didn't write fan fiction)

You're getting rusty with your flames, Rob-buns. You need to take it up a notch.

That wasn't a burn, it was a reference to Home Movies.

wait wait wait wait

no one has asked what kind of fanfiction this is?

mmm rob-buns

More like your fists are the hammers and your penis is the nail.

As long as you are not charging for your services it's fine. Since people are actually donating to you and it's not a fee, you can use it for website maintenance and if there is extra... save it for the next bill or use it to buy groceries, who cares. It’s a donation, use it how you want.

You might not want to use it for your groceries or rent for moral reasons, but that’s entirely up to you. Now If you charged people to read your stories or submit stories that different, you CAN offer exclusive things like forum titles or ranks or special access to donating only members as a reward for donating, but since they have the option to do that it’s up to them and they can say no.

Why for you quit WoW?