I'd also add that personally motivated hosting is basically what gets small sites through the day. I worked on a MUD for quite a while where a small portion of the playerbase was working professionals and the majority of the playerbase was broke college students with far too much free time. The working folks would shell out a completely inconsequential 30 dollars a month between ten of them just so they could have fun playing the game - there was never any serious discussion of adding a paid requirement to join because 3$/month is very little for a steady stream of entertainment and because the "leeches" actually contributed immensely to the activity in the MUD. The workings folks contributed money, the college folks contributed time and everyone had fun.
If you're an independent reporter running a blog you can easily cover the hosting costs by just writing an occasional article for a major organization. If you have a fun hobby that hobby is probably worth the cost of hosting a server to attract other hobbiests.
Really, the only thing that would possibly die forever might be services like YouTube which have absolutely absurdly weak monetization potentials when compared to their infrastructure costs. Losing YouTube would suck, but if it meant I'd never need to see another internet ad I think the cost is worth it... and more curated services like Nebula have proven that purely subscriber funded video content can work - but it'd be hard to enter that market with no free hosting platform like YouTube.
> If you're an independent reporter running a blog you can easily cover the hosting costs by just writing an occasional article for a major organization.
I agree with most of what you wrote except for the above. Unless you're an independent reporter in things like gardening or motor sports, the major media organizations see you as an enemy and would prefer to shut you down.
If you're an independent reporter running a blog you can easily cover the hosting costs by just writing an occasional article for a major organization. If you have a fun hobby that hobby is probably worth the cost of hosting a server to attract other hobbiests.
Really, the only thing that would possibly die forever might be services like YouTube which have absolutely absurdly weak monetization potentials when compared to their infrastructure costs. Losing YouTube would suck, but if it meant I'd never need to see another internet ad I think the cost is worth it... and more curated services like Nebula have proven that purely subscriber funded video content can work - but it'd be hard to enter that market with no free hosting platform like YouTube.