crowdfunding | What Other Ventures Could Be Crowd-Funded (Reply)

I have a friend who ghost writes articles, and gets paid very poorly for doing so. It seems to me that there has to be a better way of getting writing skills funded, and I know

ysabetwordsmith does very well with her poetry fishbowls, but I'm wondering if crowd-funding cannot be done to take writing and other skills to their next level of evolution.

Looking at the different angles, here's what I deduced.
1) Writers love to write
2) Readers enjoy reading
3) Writers need to be paid
4) Not everyone who reads can afford to purchase an entire work
5) The amount of free downloaded music on the web makes me think this applies to music.
6) Further thought leads me to think that this applies to nearly any skill or art form.

Rather than getting paid a royalty by a publishing house in a lump sum, and then that publisher (or agent or gallery -- whatever fits) handle the marking and revenue of the item, in some instances it just makes sense for the creator to do it themselves.

Let's take a knitting pattern, for example. It could be included in a collection of patterns by the same designer, or it could be sold to a publishing house who can put it in an anthology from different designers. Could it be crowd-funded? The designer shows a picture of the completed item and gives a brief description of its history and purpose, maybe citing materials used. As donations come in, the instructions, along with photos and step by step progress, can be uploaded. This way the designer gets paid for their work, the item is funded, and once the financial goal has been reached it can be available for free distribution. It seems that this way, everyone benefits.

It is my belief that many other items can be funded by crowd-sourcing. At our house we do needlework, soap-making, brewing, pottery, and a host of other hands on activities. I see the potential for crowd-sourcing in all of them, and certainly plan on giving this more thought.