The art alone from someone like Wagnermutt costs 150 minimum, not including background and everything, I only (and recently) started making 200, I'm already working with him on installments at times, plus at the end of the day I'm also handling coding and writing alone, and as you can imagine, I can't pay the bills and eat with 50 ~ 100 a moth, still here I am working on the project with all the love and passion I got and right there to answer everyone's questions about it whenever they need.
So I guess it's quite fair to compare popular VNs making 1k+ a month and me trying to work through mine with the little I got.