What exactly is "dumb" amounts of money? If by dumb, you mean enough for authors to get by, then you are probably in the minority.
People love talking about how much they hate ads, and how, no, they're not cheap, they would totally pay for content.
Let's be honest - internet users are cheap. They want stuff for free. And if site A starts charging, they will jump ship to site B, until eventually it's a race to the bottom.
Ads seems to be the only model that works (thus far).
Many attempts have been made to monetise things (a la micropayments).
I believe Google did something before, where you paid cents, or fractions of a cent to authors for article views. This was back in 2012:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-20395407
And recently Mozilla's Brendan Eich is doing Brave, with bitcoin micropayments. I'd love to see it gain traction, but I don't see it going mainstream.
Look, I know some ad networks go too far - but IMHO, Google/FB ads are hardly that intrusive. (I personally hate pop-up/pop-under ads, and auto-playing videos)
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not in ads - above opinions are purely my own).
People love talking about how much they hate ads, and how, no, they're not cheap, they would totally pay for content.
Let's be honest - internet users are cheap. They want stuff for free. And if site A starts charging, they will jump ship to site B, until eventually it's a race to the bottom.
Ads seems to be the only model that works (thus far).
Many attempts have been made to monetise things (a la micropayments).
I believe Google did something before, where you paid cents, or fractions of a cent to authors for article views. This was back in 2012:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-20395407
And recently Mozilla's Brendan Eich is doing Brave, with bitcoin micropayments. I'd love to see it gain traction, but I don't see it going mainstream.
Look, I know some ad networks go too far - but IMHO, Google/FB ads are hardly that intrusive. (I personally hate pop-up/pop-under ads, and auto-playing videos)
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not in ads - above opinions are purely my own).