[p10_user]

people can find multiple ways to get to the same product. once your way starts charging they will find another way.

[dawalker]

Is the implication here that you need to charge and users will leave you once you do? If you can make a product that's significantly better, then you should be able to charge. The thing I'd note for affiliate marketing as a business model is that for it to generate significant revenue, you need to have a lot of traffic while other business models can generate that much faster (subscriptions) or make you money based off of that traffic (ads) instead of how many products are purchased.

[p10_user]

Your note on affiliate marketing is what makes your first statement potentially unachievable. How does a consumer "know" that a product is significantly better to the point of "worth paying for"? There's always another free (potentially ad supported) affiliate marketer (or 5) around the corner. (Also considering the "worst" version of this "product" is an unskippable ad").

I don't know the solution

[p10_user]

I suppose two case studies worth exploring are:

Consumer Reports (subscription magazine recurring revenue) NY times Wirecutter (a potential add on service to boost apparent value for subscribers)