Wanted to revive this thread and toss in some comments since I actually did this with paid mods for FFXIV in a private group for about a year which split out later into the booty bay. IYKYK. Anyways.
I absolutely love this idea, This is honestly what I dream for and a huge reason why I stay here on the forums and try to participate so much. I know I get a lot out of this community, and I genuinely try to put back into it whenever I can.
If there could be a system where people could toss in a dollar for an outfit set's fullpack, It'd only mean 25~30 people have to pitch in for an outfit set making the purchase a lot more accessible for everyone.
I grew up pretty poor and still have problems some weeks to maintain everything.. Just how life is for a lot of people.
Something to consider with a lot of this though is fees, You can bypass it entirely by sending to friends/family but only in the same country and only with certain payment methods..
The other potential issue is also the legal identity of the "middleman" buyer, as well as the split-payers would be known or acknowledged to at least the middleman.
In the issue of the fees for paypal at least, as a freelance artist my fee per dollar outside of the country or by direct donations is about $0.20 per dollar.
This would be about $6 per 30 contributors all contributing $1., So either the contributors would need more to cover costs.. Or the Middleman in question being the "owner" of the assets themselve's would pay a slight premium covering the fees.
As far as Who the middleman could be, I feel like you could have a multi step process for.
Are You capable of doing that job?
Do You want to handle it to begin with?
These could be handled with a public form to take in applicants sort of.
Then There could be a handful of applicants to vote for.
To avoid people running off with money as mentioned maybe just keep it to 1 or 2 outfit sets at a time so that way only around $50 is in the pocket.
This is what I did personally in my private group for Paid mods, And worked out great. People would dump in some money to be used for modder's patreons or specific paid mods for XIV and we'd just share a google drive I paid for.
Anyways, I'll cut it off here since I could ramble for awhile on this. Just really hope this website service goes somewhere and gets some updates. T_T