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Funny, I first read "passive income" as "basic income". It's a related point, though. If you cannot afford to work for free, you'll never write that first lucky

Funny, I first read "passive income" as "basic income". It's a related point, though. If you cannot afford to work for free, you'll never write that first lucky rent-generating article. It matches what I see on Patreon (web comics at least): None of the creators seem to have started with the assurance that they could generate a significant income, or even quit their full-time job. A few of them do now, but I'm pretty sure most of those comics would have happened anyway (given the time), because the artists really wanted to create them. By the way, free alternative platforms like Liberapay do exist (still growing, too). But I cannot blame artists to use Patreon instead - most of their audience is there. Audience comes first, and paying 10% in fees doesn't matter when you expected no significant earnings anyway. Another interesting point on Patreon is that I can see the artist's approximate income. I may decide to support new creators instead when I see that they have already 10k a month. Not the most common case on Patreon, of course, but it matches my goal to support the creation of new art better than helping some super-popular ones to get their next million.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> free alternative platforms like Liberapay do exist (still growing, too) From the front page at liberapay.com: > We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal. Not free, not alternative.
- Matumio 5y ago
  It's free in the sense of being entirely free software. You can read the SQL code that calculates your balance. It's alternative in the sense that they don't take a cut of your donations. (Sites like Patreon take a much bigger cut than any payment provider.) They suggest donating to Liberapay itself, but it's optional. But yes, it isn't alternative as in "truly micro". In fact they got kicked from of their previous provider, probably for generating too many small transactions. They changed the system, so now you usually pay for a few months in advance.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
The problem with Patreon is that it is the opposite of micropayments. It's handful of people paying a small selection of people. It helps of course but I'm subscribed to well over a hundred Youtube channels (many of which have Patreon accounts) and I'm simply not able to pay all of them a significant amount because that would be too expensive and I'm reluctant to cherry pick just a few because that would be unfair to the others. And I don't want to micromanage a hundred plus micro payments assuming that's even possible. But I'd have no trouble to have say 10$ per month distributed among them. It would have to be easy, fair, transparent, and automated. Even if it's just 1 cent; that adds up to interesting money if you get thousands to millions of views per month. I had never heard of Liberapay. But it definitely looks very interesting. And they seem to be handling some non trivial amounts of cash despite being relatively small. I noticed Aurelien Pierre is on it apparently and I actually do enjoy his content and work (he works on and publishes about Darktable). Something like that with millions of users paying every month would sustain quite a few content creators; even if the individual payments are small. It's one of those things where a critical mass of content creators need to join for this to start working.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> free alternative platforms like Liberapay do exist (still growing, too) From the front page at liberapay.com: > We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal. Not free, not alternative.

Matumio 5y ago
It's free in the sense of being entirely free software. You can read the SQL code that calculates your balance. It's alternative in the sense that they don't take a cut of your donations. (Sites like Patreon take a much bigger cut than any payment provider.) They suggest donating to Liberapay itself, but it's optional. But yes, it isn't alternative as in "truly micro". In fact they got kicked from of their previous provider, probably for generating too many small transactions. They changed the system, so now you usually pay for a few months in advance.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

The problem with Patreon is that it is the opposite of micropayments. It's handful of people paying a small selection of people. It helps of course but I'm subscribed to well over a hundred Youtube channels (many of which have Patreon accounts) and I'm simply not able to pay all of them a significant amount because that would be too expensive and I'm reluctant to cherry pick just a few because that would be unfair to the others. And I don't want to micromanage a hundred plus micro payments assuming that's even possible. But I'd have no trouble to have say 10$ per month distributed among them. It would have to be easy, fair, transparent, and automated. Even if it's just 1 cent; that adds up to interesting money if you get thousands to millions of views per month. I had never heard of Liberapay. But it definitely looks very interesting. And they seem to be handling some non trivial amounts of cash despite being relatively small. I noticed Aurelien Pierre is on it apparently and I actually do enjoy his content and work (he works on and publishes about Darktable). Something like that with millions of users paying every month would sustain quite a few content creators; even if the individual payments are small. It's one of those things where a critical mass of content creators need to join for this to start working.