I'm actually considering a Patreon myself. I've gotten a bit overwhelmed by the commission model of doing things for my stories and I thought perhaps allowing people to to just donate if they like what I'm just writing on my own, with possible benefits for larger donations. Patreon seems pretty solid, but keep in mind that they take 5% of donations to you as a kind of fee, since they're running the venue making this possible.

Aside from that, giving gifts to donators or special benefits aren't required. I've been doing through research on it myself. I'm even working my way through the legalese stuff in the agreements.

My current conclusion is that it seems pretty solid. The only problem would be getting people over to it on Patreon from here. But I guess a few journals and notices could help with that.

well like I said, I wouldn't hide anything behidn the paywall and using the smallest pledge available to them. I have read a bit of the terms of agreement myself and i did not understand much except that they allow porn ( as long as it's not IRL ).

I guess this sort of thing would work great if you had a LARGE watcher base. Because I estimate that less then 1% of the people that actually watch you would actually donate... basicly the hardcore fans.

The platform seems pretty solid and a lot of artists are making good money off of it... but it'sm ostly the popular and very prolific artists.

Small-timers like myself are likelly to not get much on account of being relativelly unknown on the scene.

So whille it costs you nothing to se it up, I guess one has to be prepared for dissapointment regarding obtaining pledgers.

Jurnals these days are not the best way of getting news across. Since jurnals tend to pille up. I currently have almsot 400 unread jurnals here, and i nuke them fairly regularly.

I think the most efficient way woudld be to make the notice of it on each submission description... kind of seems liek spam, but people are more likelly to read the description of a submission then your jurnal.

Well, I don't see any harm in it!

Just an "If you like my art, support my Patreon!" button would get a few :)

Patreon has sort of promoted the idea that you "get something" for backing, for better or worse. I personally support about 8 or 9 artists, but I only support artists who do not use Patreon as a paywall, and tend to prefer webcomic artists.

There are lots of motivations you can use without making Patreon a paywall. Offering something like a Patreon supporters stream once a month, where supporters over $X can join the stream, and call out suggestions/ideas.

There are quite a few people who will pay to get some sort of say in what an artist they appreciate draws, even if the art is then shared publicly. It's what commissions are after all.

But, from my experience, if you /really/ want to turn Patreon into a money-producing stream of income, instead of just a few pennies on the side, the paywall model is the way to go. The furry community is fickle and opinionated though (myself included), and very few furry artists have truly managed to gather a significant following. I know of at least two artists over 250,000 favorites that have Patreons that bring in less than $300 a month.

One of the fandom's most popular artsts, Zaush, recently decided not to use Patreon, but there was a long thread where a lot of people weighed in, http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6544301/ might be instructive.

oh i never, in my wildest dreams, thought of turning it in to a paywall... I detest those tactics. It was only meant to be a little something for people that like my comics to support it because they like it, with the reward being maybe getting sneak-peaks at the upcoming pages as I work on them and so on ( for the 1 $ pledge ). It's just meant to be something on the side ( as I do have a day job so I'm not paying my bills from art.)

But I have been hesitant to really get in to this...