The overwhelming popularity of some fan sites caused them problems. Popular fan sites were overcome with traffic, so many servers could not handle them, and most sites on free servers spent part of the day down. In order to handle the traffic, webmasters had to pay for more bandwidth. Some of the most popular sites were paying thousands of dollars a month from their own pocket to keep the site alive. Instead of becoming a pay site, some fan sites have elected to take donations, some even offer a gift in return.