This is shifting rapidly. We are not living 25 years ago.

Kickstarter initiated a trend of paying for things we want by funding people that are creating in our niche areas of interest.

Platforms like Patreon and Ko-fi let you support the creators you want directly. You can do it on a subscription basis and have a 1:1 channel to talk with the creator. You can get custom work, support, advice, etc.

Github introduced recurring donations directly on user pages, making it seamless to contribute to open source creators. I chip in $5-30/mo to my favorite projects. I'm not the only one doing this, and the money adds up.

Twitch and YouTube introduced subscriptions, bits, and channel points, which gamify contributions and make you feel involved. These have resulted in a massive windfall for creators, and that same technique will propagate into open source. "Get your name in the README", etc., distributed on millions of machines is a compelling technique.

The world is changing.