I don't mean this in any way condescending to comic fans, but it was always my impression the collecting aspect was a predominant sales driver. Additional sales for digital copies must be gravy, but would this satisfy a large enough fan base for this to really develop beyond what's in place?

In theory, theory and practice are exactly the same. In practice, they're nothing alike.

Giving people a small amount of money for liking their website? Isn't that what ad space does?

The problems with micropayments are a) the expense of collecting them tends to swamp the actual value, and b) people are used to stuff on the Internet being free and don't want to pay. The whole "information wants to be free" crowd that thinks artists, writers, and musicians should work strictly for tips (but, conveniently programmers should still get paid salaries) hasn't helped any, either.

Let me see if I get your logic here. You advertise facebook, twitter and e-mail and as far as I know you get $0 from all 3 of those places. You get publicity, they get publicity and you're ok with that, however 1 addition that could actually pay you and at the same time provide the same publicity you're getting with the other links and you have a problem with it?

@5 Musicians shouldn't and will likely never work strictly for tips, unless you count playing in a venue to people paying $5 a ticket to see you charity, and I'm assuming you like me consider that business. It's about how we plan to use the internet we've built, not about who's getting the invoice for whatever payments you think you're entitled to based on what used to happen 20 years ago. The days where you need to spend millions of dollars recording an album is completely over, and those albums aren't half as good as a youtube clip made by a 7 year old with $300 technology, who's getting no money for the art he's creating yet it's continued to be made in record numbers. What would these salaried musicians do exactly? Produce quantity of songs over quality? Because that's exactly what you get with programming, and it hasn't helped either. I understand the paradigm we live in that artists who produce work need to get paid, but you can't expect that every little thing you do needs to have a monetary price attached to it, but if you want to live in that world you need to find a new way to secure your property. Don't interact with people unless you know they've paid you for your password/encrypted services, don't expect that the government has the capability to stop users from taking music off CDs. They don't have enough to stop drugs, how are they supposed to police our clicks?

@2

microfinance [is] wonderful in theory and useless in practice.

Would you like to back up that bizarre claim with reliable sources?