I just uploaded what is probably the last Rita page of this month to Patreon. And did some math. If nobody changes their pledge, I’m about to make about $600. For drawing comics about a lesbian robot with reality problems.
YAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!1!!!!!
Damn but I love crowdsourcing micropayments into real money. Seriously; there are a few people who are kind enough to contribute double-digit values per page, but take those folks out and I think the average donation is probably something like .85¢/page.
Is this an early-mover advantage that I’m part of, or a change in how easy it is to turn a passion project like Rita into something that can be sustainable as a job? I don’t know. I know it helps a lot that I had the funds to support myself for the three and a half years I’ve been drawing Rita so far. And that I’ve been drawing at a professional level of skill for about a decade. I know there are people out there who talk about “Kickstarter fatigue” now that some high-profile projects have underdelivered or outright failed, and I’m sure those people are predicting the doom of Patreon and other crowdsourcing as a fad. But on the other hand it might just be that these things will turn out to work best for projects of a certain scope; twenty people working on a game for a year and a half are going to burn through a lot more money than one person working on a comic for four years. (And tangentially: oh man Hover is going to have its first playable alpha soon, SO EXCITED – but I digress.)
As always, when I talk about my Patreon campaign: a huge thanks goes to everyone who donates to support my work, and please don’t feel at all guilty if you’re not one of them. If you do feel guilty about it, you can also support my stuff by telling your friends how neat it is, or starting a TVTropes page about it, or… whatever, you know? Or if you know someone who’s donating, do something neat for them.