You exist in the market as it is, not as you wish it to be. If you can't find a way to make it pay (if that is your priority/a requirement) then you'll fail and someone else will try. If no one can think of a way to make it pay, then we'll lose such sites until someone can.

Which is fine. Better that than ads.

And we'll go back to having a greater proportion of hobbyist sites. People doing it for the love of it rather than the money. That's fine.

I think advertising is a terribly crude way to make money from a website, as well as being cultural and aesthetic pollution. I think we'll look back on this period when websites were ad-funded with embarrassment.

Of course, I can't think of a better idea.

But if the use of ad-blockers increases then many many sites will go pop (the really good ones - the ones that people are actually actively willing to pay for - will survive of course) until some clever sausage eventually thinks of a better idea. And that will be great. Good old free market at work.

This is often threatened, occasionally attempted, and rarely continued after the resulting precipitous traffic drop. "Content" is not rare. If a particular producer can't figure out a remuneration technique that doesn't annoy consumers, she'll find her lunch eaten by competing producers who can.