What do you think about the Paypal donation button?

Dear Reader,

You visit this blog occasionally or regularly, or you read this content on your RSS feed reader. And maybe you wondered what I do get out of this, why I am putting so much effort into creating this content that you are reading. Obviously one major factor is that I like to talk about my hobby, everybody does. But my interest in games, and MMORPGs in particular, is not the only thing that keeps this blog going. I am also very interested in blogging itself: Blogging as a social phenomenon, as lowering the barrier of entry into publishing, the interaction between bloggers and their readers, and everything that is related with that. Thus about 11 months ago I started an experiment, putting up a Paypal donation button on my blog. Not because I needed the money, but because I wanted to know whether that was a viable way of blog financing.

The experiment certainly was interesting. Apparently there was pent-up demand, and I received hundreds of dollars in the first month. Then donations slowly came to a halt. My total donations income for 2011 up to now? $0. On the other hand I recently followed a trackback to a forum where somebody had linked a post of mine, and found that some people thought that blogs shouldn't have donation buttons at all, that a donation button was "proof" that I wrote only for money, thus making my opinion less valid.

Thus I was wondering whether I should remove the Paypal donation button from my blog, for example in early April, after exactly one year. But I would like to hear your opinion about this: Does the donation button bother you? Do you think it diminishes the value of the blog and the opinions expressed here? Is there any advantage for you, the reader, in me having a Paypal donation button? Is a donation button better or worse than having for example Google Adsense ads or banner ads?

Regards,

Tobold

[EDIT: After reading your comments, I decided to keep the button, but change it from "Donate" to "Buy me a coffee", to make the nature of the donation more clear.]