I think the clearest sign that Patreon is doing something that's significant is this: I started a Patreon for my comics because my fans asked me if I had one.

I think the clearest sign that Patreon is doing something that's significant is this: I started a Patreon for my comics because my fans asked me if I had one. It's grown slowly over the past year; I currently get $91 every time I draw a page of my comic, and made about $450 last month - with zero effort on my part beyond putting a few links to it here and there on my site, and talking about it on Twitter and my blog when I first set it up. Sure, there are a million ways I could distribute my comics and get money for them. But every new channel I try to play with is time I'm not spending on the comic. Maintaining two channels (free on the website, publishing books via Kickstarter and selling them at various comic conventions) already takes up a lot of my energy that I'd rather be spending on drawing more pages. (said comic is http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/ http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/, since I always get a few people asking where it is if I don't post a link to it when I mention it around here.)