Anyone made profitable side project with donations or pay-what-you-want?

As a counterpoint, I accept donations on my website (see profile), and it pays about 1% of what affiliate links pay. It would not cover my grocery bill. I'd estimate that I get about 0.70€ per thousand visitors.

If I got 5€ for every email exchange where I personally advise people, I'd make more than that. The donation link is in my signature.

This suits me, but it shows that people expect the internet to cost nothing, and won't donate unless they're shamed into doing it.

In my opinion, donations don't work if your goal is to live from something. They're a bonus, not a business model. Even major open source projects like OpenSSL struggle to keep the lights on. Only some content creators with a large audience can make it work.