[randomdev3]

Paying $1 to a creator earn them more than all the ads you would watch during your lifetime. Applies to websites also.

But noone wants to pay.

[szszrk]

That's just plain lie.

There is A LOT o f creators supported by pure money donations from individual creators, or mostly by those. A lot of them support themselves by selling merch. Which is nothing new, as nowadays a lot of small/medium size bands live of selling merch.

When a major Polish radio, legendary 3rd national radio channel, went to shit after several decades (fired important staff and dummed down offer) people literally crowdfunded a full successor, with same famous presenters and so on. When that one started to push weird agenda to much and diverged from original goals... There was another one crowdfunded, pulled a lot of other major famous personell, and runs as a huge project successfully from Patreon donations.

These examples are not even unique.

[severus_snape]

I pay. People pay, stop saying no one wants to pay, it's wrong. One example that comes in mind is Wikipedia: no ads, people pay.

[cjmcqueen]

Google and other companies that use Wikipedia pay a lot more than "people".