alt Hacker NewsVoluntary donations are practically impossible. Sure, you get the odd straggler, but it’s so, so rare.
I have the most popular NSFW LoRA (actually a LoKR but whatever) for at least one major text to image model on CivitAI.
Once it blew up I made a Patreon, maybe 6 months ago? I get $50 a month from it. I doubt that even covers my electricity costs for training.
Podcasts and videos do have the advantage of being able to ask for people to donate with every podcast/video, but people just aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to. It’s a rare trait.
Quite frankly, I don't think you can compare image generation, let alone NSFW image generation, with YouTube and podcasts. You are simply operating in a medium in which this is going to be dramatically tougher, primarily because most people who consume your content are likely there for the content and unlikely to have any relationship to you specifically. But either way, "It's a rare trait" isn't disagreeing with what I said. The successful conversion rate in my last comment was below 1%.