As usual, I agree wholly with pg, but I think he is ignoring a very significant fringe group.
People are willing to pay for good information/entertainment/content on a tip or tip-like basis, especially if the author(s) is a frequent publisher they can maintain a long term relationship of some form with.
The online experiments of NiN is one example. Perhaps a more apropos one is ArsTechnica. They sell advertising and also premium subscriptions. They do reserve some content for the premium subscriptions and they turn on a few extra features of the site, but I suspect the vast majority of their subscribers think of it as a "tip-like" payment rather than thinking that little bit extra is worth the subscription amount.
People are willing to pay for good information/entertainment/content on a tip or tip-like basis, especially if the author(s) is a frequent publisher they can maintain a long term relationship of some form with.
The online experiments of NiN is one example. Perhaps a more apropos one is ArsTechnica. They sell advertising and also premium subscriptions. They do reserve some content for the premium subscriptions and they turn on a few extra features of the site, but I suspect the vast majority of their subscribers think of it as a "tip-like" payment rather than thinking that little bit extra is worth the subscription amount.