The model I would like to see involves micro-payments. I would be willing to &quot;tip&quot; say $0.10 or $0.15 here and there to instantly unlock certain articles. I think if this were easy to do then wired and other websites like it would make a lot more money over all from it&#x27;s content.<p>The problem though is that with today&#x27;s credit card infrastructure the processing fees make this sort of thing unrealistic, and the emerging alternative (blockchain tech) is not yet widely enough accepted by consumers to be useful in this regard.<p>I think we&#x27;ll get there eventually, and a new &quot;culture of tipping&quot; on the web may flourish in a way that is very healthy for the journalistic community as a whole.  It could also mean that for instance a poor person in a remote part of the world could record a youtube video of some traditional folk art or dance and then upload it to multiple social platforms and receive material amounts of money from random visitors within the first few hours without first needing to &quot;strike a deal with youtube&quot; or anything like that.<p>This might reorient village life in some areas away from making trinkets to sell to western tourists and instead towards making traditional creative art to share with a global audience.  This could in theory help counteract the &quot;westernization effect&quot; that global cultures have been experiencing.