For a site such as ours, with a fairly small niche readership of 1 to 2 million page views monthly, finding cut-rate hosting that's affordable by the hobbyist is in the upper end of feasability. For larger sites such as Casters Realm and Crossroads of Dereth, with 10 to 20 million page views and up, this no longer is an option. Charge for content. The only problem is that it won't work . Here's one thing to consider.
Most websites grow through word of mouth.
But links to subscription-only sites are kind of pointless, since you have to actually pay money before seeing what's on the other side. Your business doesn't grow. Then it dies. On the plus side, this cuts your bandwidth costs significantly. Simply put, people expect more from what they actually pay for.