It's a good path for an unusual enough person. I live in Vermont and can get by on a quarter of that $100k a year (seems insanely high to me), and used to sell

It's a good path for an unusual enough person. I live in Vermont and can get by on a quarter of that $100k a year (seems insanely high to me), and used to sell DSP plugins for $50 each. I put out a lot of plugins and make the case that if you'd have bought one of them per year at the previous price, to join my Patreon at $50 a year. I also suggest that if you're using lots of the plugins, to multiply that, but I don't do other things to encourage whales, leave them as un-served as possible: they get nothing free customers don't get, and my energy goes towards supporting those who are too poor to do any of this. I've got over 600 patrons and the model works. One thing I would note is: since you're no kind of celebrity doing this, you're operating with a strange sort of fanbase. I am just an isolated hacker who's been pursuing audio quality for a quarter century or more, and who's been desperately poor and so I make a point to support the struggling artist. However, this makes the social dynamic between me and these 'true fans' weird. The 'whales' are predictable and I discourage them by not giving them special things: they want custom plugins and for me to build stuff exactly to their tastes, assuming their tastes are the only thing that matters. The semi-fans are also easy: they don't give anything and don't ask for much, they're just watching. But some of the true fans are throwing money because they've identified things about me that they have trouble contextualizing: they'll say 'genius', they'll call me 'sir' as if I was some knight, and surprisingly often they'll literally call me Jesus Christ as apparently that's their only model for somebody trying to give substantial amounts of stuff without demanding payment. Gotta be patient with this. "1000 true fans" is real. But ask yourself, how does a true fan, a 'most intense and passionate' fan, act? Are you emotionally ready for making these parasocial connections with a hell of a lot of people (more than can fit in your house) who are not casual, not measured, not calm about their fandom? If you extrapolate what in yourself or your project would elicit this kind of fandom, you're looking at a sort of private army dedicated to your values. It's worth thinking about what values you embody that you'd like to see multplied 1000 times and set out there in the world. Like I said, I have to be patient with mine: they're not difficult, but it freaks me out sometimes when they get super hyperbolic. If I was all about punishing evildoers, my 600 fans (being hyperbolic) would be a pretty fearsome army.