Leaving all of this aside, people just don't donate. They'll watch 100 hours of a YouTube channel and eagerly await new videos, and still not donate a cent. Donors are a very small fraction of the audience.
I get 1 donation per 14,000 visitors. Even among the people who email me with complex questions, and get detailed answers that no one else offers, only a few donate. The link is not hidden or anything; people just expect content to be free.
Just consider how much content you voluntarily consume, and how much of it you paid for.
> Leaving all of this aside, people just don't donate. They'll watch 100 hours of a YouTube channel and eagerly await new videos, and still not donate a cent. Donors are a very small fraction of the audience.
The thing you seem to not understand is that ads and donations are not compatible business models. If you are making money off ads, that is why you are not making money off donations.
The content you make to sell ads is attractive up front, with clickbaity headlines and overwrought thumbnails. If the platform you're on rewards watch/read time, you then just have to provoke some sort of addictive emotion like outrage or fear to keep people there for a bit. On platforms that don't reward watch/read time, you don't even have to do that.
The content you make to attract donations is useful, educational, or otherwise beneficial to your audience. This is incompatible with pinning people down with brain chemicals so you can ram ads down their throat.
If you interrupt your content with a NordVPN or Athletic Greens commercial, people are less likely to donate. Why would I donate to someone who is trying to manipulate me? You're not doing me a service, you're doing advertisers a service.
Every example you have given of people not donating, is easily explained by the fact that the content is ad supported.
> I get 1 donation per 14,000 visitors. Even among the people who email me with complex questions, and get detailed answers that no one else offers, only a few donate. The link is not hidden or anything; people just expect content to be free.
Alternative hypothesis: people just expect that you're already getting paid by advertisers, which by your own admission is true.
You've set up this exchange where you use your audience to sell ads. You chose to make that relationship with your audience.
It should not be surprising to you that the audience uses you as they see fit. Those are the terms you signed up for.
I get 1 donation per 14,000 visitors. Even among the people who email me with complex questions, and get detailed answers that no one else offers, only a few donate. The link is not hidden or anything; people just expect content to be free.
Just consider how much content you voluntarily consume, and how much of it you paid for.