[Veen]

> makes ads or extracting value from your public by all means ok

Certainly not by all means. But it isn't unreasonable to expect that if people gain value from something you create, some of that value accrues to you as the creator.

I make most of my living as a freelance writer, but I just charge other people to write the content they can't or won't.

There is also another problem here: the market doesn't typically incentivize the sort of content we'd like to see created. Long form investigative journalism is hugely expensive, and in a world awash with free content, few people think they should have to pay for it. But do we really want to see that sort of content go away?

[zdkl]

The use-case you describe as freelance writer or proper investigative journalism is the one place I expect targeted (and author curated) advertising to be able to pay the bills in the ideal market-fit theory. If as an author and "provider of opinions" you can't convince commercial actors in your niche to funnel value to you, I'd argue you shouldn't be writing non-fiction commercialy.

And in this not strictly commercial writing context, I believe client side mining may be a good form of low-commitment compensation.