[IshKebab]

I mean the key problem is surely that most readers don't want to pay to read blogs, so you can't really fund a large business from it. Medium has 180 employees apparently, which tbf is less than I expected. But still, it's a very simple site. Really it should be "finished" and running on like 50 employees at the most. You could then probably find it by relatively reasonable advertising instead of paywalls. Or potentially charge authors for features like image hosting.