They don't get $5 per month from ads. So the true subscription price must be a lot lower.

One option: a fund where you buy tokens, that you can spend reading an article. That will, however, lead to more clickbait and AI slop and snowing under serious blogs with low volume.

This micro payments for content idea has been tried a few times, with slight variations. No-one has cracked the problem yet. But maybe one day