Hello
What is the alternative for an ads-business model for a content-based website?
Ads are annoying and make a bad User experience but it is the only source of revenue of content based website e.g (blog, community/forum, tutorials ).
What do you think of ads and is it reliable source of revenue .
Subscriptions.
Medium is attempting this on a large scale. Ev Williams recently wrote about their new model:
https://blog.medium.com/the-medium-model-3ec28c6f603a
Why not charge users a subscription to premium articles?
This is what Paul Thurrott does, and I gladly pay the subscription because I know it is high quality, in-depth analysis that he is writing.
The alternative to his website (for Microsoft-related news) is, for example, Windows Central. I avoid their website as much as possible because their website is riddled with ads and that takes away from the user experience. Also, even if you use an ad-blocker, they still have many articles which serve no other purpose than stuffing it full of affiliate links, so these are very poorly written and a bit senseless articles.
I much rather pay actual money for good content.