In 2008 Kevin Kelly wrote a prescient essay called "1000 True Fans".

Key quote:

"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living."

According to Kelly, if you have 1,000 True Fans (defined as people who will pay for your content) you have a large enough audience for your work to generate enough money to live.

Since that essay crowdfunding has become a large industry, but it's been mostly focused on the funding of physical products.

More recently there has a been a growing trend towards the funding of artists and other creatives through "patron funding" models. These are sites that allow fans to subscribe to the creative output of individuals.

A good example is Patreon, a site that allows creators to build subscription services that allow access to their work.

According to the New York Times article Suffering for Your Art? Maybe You Need a Patron, Patreon currently "has one million “fans” who each contribute an average of $12 every month to their favorite artists on the site."

Originally designed for musicians, Patreon now has a wide range of "creatives".

A good example is Naked Bakers.

The Vice article How NSFW Content Makers Found a Home on Prateon describes Nakde Baker as an R rated video series "that let's patrons of the show watch the "Baker" whip eggs, sift flour, and add her wet ingredients to her dry ingredients in the nude."

NSFW is a an acronym for "not suitable/safe for work".

Subscribing to Naked Bakers costs a minimum of $3 per month, with the average subscriber paying $10 per month. The Naked Bakers, BTW, also gardens and cleans in the nude.

While the relatively new Naked Baker show is not a huge hit, it's generating enough revenue that the "Baker" has quit her day job.

One driver behind the shift to patron funding is advertising revenue models are becoming harder to make work. This is due to what some are calling the adpocalypse, which is the advertising revenue declines many content sites are seeing.

The other driver is the growing awareness that a relatively small number of patrons can generate a decent living. As Kelly pointed out in his essay:

"If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year. That’s a living for most folks."

Patron funding is not new. During the Renaissance royal houses provided room, board, materials and business support to talented artists of the day.

Today, thanks to the Internet and platforms like Prateon, you don't have to be a Medici, or even rich, to be a patron.

This democratization of patronage is a good thing for artists and content creators. We believe this model will continue to expand, providing a growing alternative revenue source for a variety of independent workers.