I know patreon only because of youtube. Are there many creators not connected to youtube on patreon? My impression is if youtube would allow donations to creators, patreon would be dead. Am I wrong?
Looking at the top 5 creators on Patreon[1], it seems like two of them are primarily Youtube channels. I could be wrong about that, but that's what a quick search implies to me.
In other words, it doesn't look like Patreon is exclusively or even mainly reliant on Youtube. On the other hand, if Youtube was only (let's say) 20% of their revenue, and Youtube went away, it could hurt or kill Patreon. So, maybe?
[1] https://backlinko.com/patreon-users#most-popular-creators-on...
And you can have multiple levels od membership.
> I think you can give superchats on premiers
You can if you enable them on your premieres. However a lot of creators just publish their videos rather than ran run them as premieres. But you can also enable tipping which allows viewers to give a one off tip.
> Not sure if you can limit videos to membership only.
You can, you can also limit live streams and playback of past live streams to members only. However as not to fragment their Patreon supporters, these videos are normally just uploaded as unlisted and the link is shared on Pateron.
As for the cut. On Ad's its typically a 60/40 split with YT taking the 40%. On Superchats, superstickers, superthanks (yt's one off tippings) and memberships its a 70/30 split (yt's cut being 30%).
If you have a YT page, but get your money from Patreon, you have a fallback if either of them drops you for whatever reason.
That's before you get into podcasts on Patreon, which seems to make up a lot of their userbase, if you look at their most patronized stuff. There's no particularly good podcast monetization platform, rightfully, because of its decentralized protocol.
Better to distribute your earnings on a 3rd party so if you get banned from one you still have the other.