I've been a little surprised at the success of Patreon. I kind of assumed that it would make for a nice tip for creators, but not much more. Instead there are a few webcomics that I read, taking $1000's a month (eg. SMBC at $8700/month on Patreon alone). That's a pretty decent living when you factor in that they can still do their normal t-shirts, adverts, print books and general merch on top.<p>The only question now is how long it takes to build up that kind of audience - can you can get that many people willing to pay? Quickly enough to succeed? Will new authors look at the likes of SMBC and assume that they can make a living, only to realise that their Patreon is barely scraping $50 a month? If it takes years of investment to make patronage work, they may give up before they get going.<p>It might mean that instead of just being a great artist, you have to be a great promoter too. (Kinda like being a successful academic nowadays also involves being a successful grant proposal writer.)<p>Maybe we'll start seeing the rise of patronage agents? People whose entire job is to manage the promotion of new talent in order to get to a sustainable patronage level. There already exist companies that provide Kickstarter services, so perhaps internet talent agents are just the next step.
Patronage is an interesting and potentially great model (ref: the "1000 true fans" approach), but it's kind of a half-step in the right direction. It is part of a fuller panoply, but not complete in and of itself. A step further would be segmentation (and subsequent addressing) of one's audience—be they patrons, regular customers, or casual viewers/listeners/readers. Create flexible, multiple ways for people to get to, consume, and pay for your content. Experiment with different channels, different messaging, different price points, and <i>different versions</i> of your content for those channels. Essentially, what you're doing is allowing consumers to segment themselves, by opting into the types of content (and according price points) that best fit their needs.<p>This is different from a classic up-sell strategy. Up-selling is offering everyone the same baseline, then either encouraging or goading people into paying for "value-adds." Instead, consider that your audience is heterogeneous in terms of what it wants, what it likes about you, which aspects of your content (or you) it values most, and what it considers those aspects to be worth. One size does not fit all. So sell more than one size.<p>[Note that this is <i>not</i> an inducement to cheat people. Don't try to pawn off the exact same content at different price points on different channels. If you're going to segment-and-address, you need to customize for each segment. Kickstarter campaign structures, for example, offer a decent framework by which to do this.]
As the digital media world continues towards free (journalism first, and more recently musicians releasing their music for free) we need a new way to reward or compensate creators.<p>My startup, Huzza - <a href="http://huzza.io" rel="nofollow">http://huzza.io</a> - is doing just that. It's an app that lets you tip any song or artist in the world from your phone. We like to call it pay-as-you-love, and we think it's the future of music.