I used agate in the past, but not enough people are willing to pay, and not enough publishers are willing to bother trying something beyond adverts

Those that do and are clearly aren’t enough to be sustainable

https://web.archive.org/web/20180128171037/http://agate.one/

I used it for a bit a few years ago, but the articles cost way too much - on the order of magnitude of 50c per article rather than 5c.

Every publisher overvalues their own work and guarantees that it will be read by 100x fewer people than otherwise.