The rewards are totally lame, and insanely priced. I love the comic, and really it's not worth a dollar of mine to remove the ads I don't even look at. The Kickstarter goal doesn't even remove the ad from the Comic page.
>"People often want to know how they can support the site in a way that doesn't involve t-shirts or looking at advertising, and I think we may have a way."
The kickstarter rewards aren't something you're buying, per se. You're donating money and getting a wink and a nod from the PA guys.
There's a couple of comics I'd like to see on Kickstarter this way, because I wouldn't mind tossing them some bucks, but all they have are merchandise (which I've already bought) and PayPal links. Sorry, no, no PayPal. I wouldn't really care about the rewards, I've already received them.
With a somewhat large number of people, PayPal has a bad reputation as being somewhat unscrupulous, especially when the person being screwed over isn't famous. You could find horror stories fairly easily with the Google.
Myself, I use it because people use it, and stick to the practice of never keeping any money in my account, or never expecting that money to actually make it to my bank account.
I'm not interested in using PayPal again, and my desire to support the comics does not rise past that threshold. Wouldn't call myself "adamant" about either, but I definitely do not wish to use PayPal.
Most people are going to donate less than $200 and the people that will donate will do it because they love the site, not because they're looking for swag. I've been reading PA since 2001 and aside from buying a t-shirt, have been entertained 3 times a week for over a decade for free, aside from the inherent value of my eyeballs. If I toss them some cash it will be because I love the site and because I want to support what I regard as a really awesome company, not because I demand they give me more stuff.
