Crowdfunding site Patreon has announced some new figures about how its community of fans are paying creators through its system of pledging to pay small amounts for every piece of content that an individual artist produces (e.g. YouTube videos). In a Forbes interview, Patreon founder Jack Conte says it now has 15,000 creators signed up and 50,000 ‘patrons’ supporting them, with more than $1m already distributed to those artists in the service’s first year. Each patron pays an average of $9.80 a month to artists on Patreon, with the service taking a 5% cut for itself, plus 3% to cover payment processing fees. Forbes uses the stats to suggest that an artist on Patreon could earn $60,000 a year from just 510 fans a month on Patreon, although the workings are a bit dodgy: they rely on each of those 510 fans spending their entire $9.80 on the single artist, rather than spreading it between a few as is more likely the case. Still, Patreon is playing up comparisons with YouTube, noting that one of its artists earned $2,000 for a music video on Patreon but just $28 for 14,000 views of it on YouTube.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…