Since ancient times, rich people have paid to patronize artists. These days, everyone's getting involved.
Patreon, founded in 2013, lets people pledge monthly payments of a dollar or more to creators they like. It's been growing like gangbusters, with the number of creators with over 30 patrons rising from 3,633 to 5,149 in the past five months.
Their income is rising too, with the number earning $100 a month rising from 5,364 to 8,381.
Who has the most patrons? Don't chuckle, but leading the top 50 is an adult video game maker called Breeding Season — with 11,253 patrons giving $32,566 a month to fund something described as "Harvest Moon meets Hentai."
In second place is musician Amanda Palmer, with 7,944 patrons giving $34,097 a month.
The rest is a mix of music and sketch video makers, bloggers, comic artists, indie game creators, and more, with eight marked NSFW. I've heard of a few.
Two-time Grammy winning a cappella group Pentatonix is getting $25,187 monthly from 4,941 patrons to fund better music videos.
The bloggers at Wait But Why, occasionally syndicated at Tech Insider, get $13,461 monthly from 4,169 patrons to fund good, ad-free content.
Two of my favorite film vloggers, Every Frame a Painting and The Nerdwriter, are also staying afloat thanks to Patreon.
San Francisco-based Patreon was created by musician Jack Conte and developer Sam Yam. It takes a 5% commission on pledges. Unlike Kickstarter and other crowd-funding platforms, it is focused on ongoing pledges (rather then raising money for a single project), helping creators build lives around their passion.
