Everything is a trade-off. One-time "tips" may or may not provide an income flow as as predictable as monthly pledges. However, the flipside is that it broade

Everything is a trade-off. One-time "tips" may or may not provide an income flow as as predictable as monthly pledges. However, the flipside is that it broadens your donor base. I'm more than happy to make one-off "tips" all over the place, if you have a low-friction mechanism through which I may do so. However, I'm simply NOT going to sign up as a monthly subscriber. For pretty much anything, whenever I can help it. Obviously, you lose money by not providing a mechanism for donors like me. However, I can see the argument that if you DID provide such an option, you might lose money from donors who otherwise would have pledged monthly. So which direction provides the best trade-off? I don't know, and this would probably call for some actual research to come up with real numbers rather than gut feelings. But it's definitely not an obvious no-brainer, regardless. I wryly note that this community tends to look down upon salaried employment, and seems to think that everyone with any merit should be quick-gig consultants or startup entrepreneurs. Start talking about self-employed artists though, and suddenly people want a safe predictable salary again.