Donations

Donations are required to run most private trackers, usually users aren't forced to donate however if the donation goals aren't reached for a tracker, they may have to shut down. Most trackers operate as a non-profit however there are a few exemptions, which are usually shunned in the private tracker communities

The monthly cost to run most trackers can range anywhere from $50 USD to $1000 USD. The amount required to run a tracker can surprise a lot of users but there are a lot of factors which influence the cost.

What Donations are Typically Used for
While it varies from tracker to tracker, generally most of the costs are for the same things. Costs come from: It is hard to give costs on these things as it depends greatly on how many users are on the tracker and the quality/speed that wants to be achieved.
 * IRC Server - For chatting among the community
 * Seedboxes - to give faster speeds to users on new and/or important torrents
 * Scene FTP Access - To automatically upload leaked scene content to the tracker, these are hard to get and very expensive
 * Server and bandwidth - for hosting the actual website and tracker
 * VPN - For security and privacy

How Donations are Received
Most trackers start out by receiving donations through Paypal, which works great as it is accessible by most members. Funding torrenting websites is against Paypals rules so bigger trackers tend to have their Paypal accounts frozen and funds inaccessible once their activities are reported.

This means trackers have to switch methods which usually means members have to go more out of their way to donate. Common alternative donation methods include:
 * Bitcoin
 * Discrete crowd funding campaigns
 * Pre-paid credit cards
 * Stripe