alt Hacker NewsYou say your target is $500-$1000 per video and let's assume you do videos weekly. That would mean your optimistic goal is $4500 a month. Let's say you create a voluntary donation subscription at $5 per month for people willing to support your work. That means you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them to hit your $4500 goal. That's a 0.9% conversion rate from subscribers to donators. Doesn't seem that impractical when looked at in those terms. This is often the default monetization model for small podcasts because RSS feeds don't have built in ad revenue the way YouTube does.
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At that point I'd just make a Patreon (that offers various benefits including exclusive videos not on YouTube) while also monetizing via YouTube ads and sponshorships.
Voluntary donations are practically impossible. Sure, you get the odd straggler, but it’s so, so rare.
I have the most popular NSFW LoRA (actually a LoKR but whatever) for at least one major text to image model on CivitAI.
Once it blew up I made a Patreon, maybe 6 months ago? I get $50 a month from it. I doubt that even covers my electricity costs for training.
Podcasts and videos do have the advantage of being able to ask for people to donate with every podcast/video, but people just aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to. It’s a rare trait.