I say that with complete certainty. The vast majority of content is such crap I've never even heard of it, so I'm certainly not going to pay for it. Therefore, the only people who will pay for your content are a small group of fans (the fanatics) who both know you exist and are willing to do something about it. Calling it a drop in the bucket is grossly overestimating things.
If the content of the site isn't that good, why is it a problem if the site becomes unusable?
And remember, we're not talking about my personal content. We're talking about sites like Twitter, or HN for that matter. If you don't think the content here on HN is that good, why are you here? Would you be ok with HN becoming unusable because it gets hijacked by people who don't care about adding value to the site but just want to push their personal agendas?
I say that with complete certainty. The vast majority of content is such crap I've never even heard of it, so I'm certainly not going to pay for it. Therefore, the only people who will pay for your content are a small group of fans (the fanatics) who both know you exist and are willing to do something about it. Calling it a drop in the bucket is grossly overestimating things.