The price was mostly symbolic (if they were free people would probably abuse it, e.g. for paper to line your birdcage with), and it was ads in the paper that paid for the business.

Heck, now we have multi-billion dollar companies selling us ads (Google, Meta) but no one wants to pay the people whose jobs include investigating government corruption (as well as reporting on Taylor Swift getting a ring...). Somewhat understandably, since ads on the Internet are much more obnoxious than ads on newspaper/magazines.