Chaaaaange?

“Why don’t you launch a Kickstarter campaign?”
“Have you heard of Patreon?”
“Why doesn’t your site have a Donate button?”

Put simply, I have this (evidently archaic) opinion that; if you want to make money, you have to do the work first. I don’t like the idea of taking money off people unless they get something for it immediately, not [insert timeframe here] down the line. It feels like a scam. That’s why I produce all those cheap digital comics: to finance my larger projects (and which is why I get pissed off when I find them being distributed freely online, because it slows everything down).

Even for large projects, like video-games that only have a niche audience and which big publishers won’t ever assist: I don’t see crowd funding as a particularly good way to go about getting production capital. I prefer the early release approach, such as that Mojang took with Minecraft.
No complete product? Give the people something else. A little booklet of concept art, for example. Little products to finance big ones.

I always keep in mind the approach that a company called Mastertronic took back in the C64 days: they made lots of little games and sold them at pocket money prices. It worked brilliantly.
Make something small, sell it cheaply and reinvest the money in a slightly bigger endeavour. That’s how it’s done.

Obviously I’m very, very thankful toward people offering to throw a little coin my way, but I’m only going to accept your cash if you’re buying something from me, otherwise I’ve no right to take it.
Likewise, if you do have a burning desire to support an artist or a team, I don’t want to dissuade you. But I just feel that Kickstarter and its like are part of this growing sense of self-entitlement that seems to be settling over the world, and it’s not a good thing.