I want to show you something I've been working on for the past couple of months. You can check it out at
https://subscriber-only.com
If you want to post paid written content on the web, you'll invariably reach out to Substack, Ghost or good old WordPress. If you're a fan of static site generators -- like I am -- you'll know that, by doing so, you'll lose the customizability and simplicity you get when using a tool like Jekyll.
Subscriber-Only is -- in my 100% impartial opinion -- a good alternative to using the mentioned platforms. You get to keep using Jekyll and, with a gem and a couple of lines of YAML, you'll enable subscriptions, subscriptions management, payment processing, access controls and all other needed machinery needed to have memberships on your site.
I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Do check it out and let me know what you think!
Personally I'd be very hesitant to give private blogs my payment details - I guess that's the raison d'etre of sites like medium and substack also.
But I'm pretty hesitant to do that anyway as I don't like recurring payment models. It's not that I don't like paying for things but the recurrent model is a problem for me.
Because of this I don't have any subscriptions in general to news/blog sites, though I do sponsor two people on patreon and I donate monthly to KDE. But everything else gets a big donation at the end of the year.
So perhaps I'm not the audience. I'm just wondering how well you fare with a personal blog. I'm thinking of making one with in depth tech info. It will be unmonetized (and no ads or tracking) but I worry people will not find it so I do the work for nothing :)
So if you manage to successfully monetize one, it means I have a decent chance with a free one too as there'll be an even lower barrier.