I feel as soon as money got involved, it would spiral downward. For instance, PartTimeDragons started a campaign for plushies, and while they're cute, their last 10 pages or so have all been ads for the campaign.
And what makes me kinda angry is that it doesn't have to be this way. You can easily serve both phone screens and larger ones by splitting the comic into 2 pages per release. Show them next to each other if there's enough space, vertical otherwise. That's what I plan with my own project.