I'm running a website for people learning Japanese (a dictionary and an SRS/Anki replacement, among other things) and currently making ~$1300/month from Patreon donations, up from ~$590/month the last time this show and tell was posted.
I used Patreon since it was a convenient way to 1) just get some money flowing without having to deal with all of the complexities of integrating a payment processor, e.g. without having to waste what little time I have on things like taxes (Patreon automatically handles the VAT), 2) I don't necessarily run this as I would run an actual business and most of the features are completely free, so it kinda fits Patreon's model of "supporting a creator" instead of your normal SaaS model of completely paywalling everything and giving you only a two weeks' worth of trial use, and 3) most people have already heard of Patreon, so when you're brand new and just starting out it's somewhat less sketchy than asking for people's credit card numbers directly.
In the long-term I'll probably switch to using Stripe or something along those lines (while still keeping the option to use Patreon for those who prefer it), but at this income level it's not really worth my time.
So to answer your question, I think that whether using Patreon is a good way to finance your side projects depends on what those projects are, and on what exactly you goals are.
If you're trying to run a profitable business then what I'm doing is not a good example of what you should do. It might be totally obvious, but the more you give out for free and the more you rely on voluntary Patreon-like donations the less money you'll make. I know of other apps (using a fully paywalled financing model) in this space which have less users than I have and yet they're already hiring other people to work on them, while I can't even pay myself a livable wage to make this a full time job, never mind even thinking about paying someone else to help me out.
Nice. I am exploring something very similar, but for a different language. I am curious if you considered making this a business (as in paid features/subscription based) and if not why not?
> I am exploring something very similar, but for a different language.
Which language if I may ask? I'd like to branch out into other languages too in the future (preferably into something that's easier to parse than Japanese), but since I'm nowhere near done with Japanese at this point it's probably going to take many more years until I do so.
> I am curious if you considered making this a business (as in paid features/subscription based) and if not why not?
I do already have some Patron-only features. For example, normal users get access to two different voices for the audio files, while Patrons get access to four; Patrons get early access to work-in-progress new features, etc.
But inherently I'd like to keep the base product, and in consequence the major essential features, free. It's probably a horrible business decision, but I recognize that not everyone can actually pay, and I want those people to be able to use my site too. I was once poor too, so I know how it is.
Mandarin Chinese. I taught myself the basics (and a bit beyond) quite a while ago, but I am unhappy with either always having to start from scratch with every new tool I try or learn irrelevant things I am not interested in. Before I have seen your site I thought this to be quite a niche use-case, maybe it still is.
Really just want to scratch my own itch, but if I can also add value for others and make this a well-rounded product, even better.
Link to the website: https://jpdb.io/
Still only a side-project, and will probably stay that way for a long time still.
Here's some info about the tech stack I'm using: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693959