Thank you for the feedback. I think I see a bit of our disconnect.
My main interest is in the general model of making info/entertainment available to an audience for "free" while still finding a way to monetize it. Broadcast TV and radio have done that for a long time and there are some websites that exist which do much the same. There are no membership fees. You can read/participate for free. Yet the site owner somehow makes money. Some take donations. Some use advertising to pay the bills. Some sell merchandise. (And one invests in startups, which is way more complicated than my modest goals, so not a model I am looking to emulate but it does exist.)
Perhaps I am merely a fool, tilting at windmills. But that is the general model I am shooting for. The details on how that works varies, but that model has been around for decades, both before the Internet and, in recent years, on the Internet. It can be done. It is being done. I have yet to make it work, but it is a viable model.
My main interest is in the general model of making info/entertainment available to an audience for "free" while still finding a way to monetize it. Broadcast TV and radio have done that for a long time and there are some websites that exist which do much the same. There are no membership fees. You can read/participate for free. Yet the site owner somehow makes money. Some take donations. Some use advertising to pay the bills. Some sell merchandise. (And one invests in startups, which is way more complicated than my modest goals, so not a model I am looking to emulate but it does exist.)
Perhaps I am merely a fool, tilting at windmills. But that is the general model I am shooting for. The details on how that works varies, but that model has been around for decades, both before the Internet and, in recent years, on the Internet. It can be done. It is being done. I have yet to make it work, but it is a viable model.