Many online venues are small operations with small or nonexistent budgets.
Whatever money they have to spend often goes toward services such as design, programming, and promotion. However, you can't have a Web site, e-mail publication, or any kind of online venue without content. If you've chosen to publish that kind of venue because it serves your goals, then you're more likely to succeed in attracting or recruiting content volunteers. This doesn't necessarily mean that your venue must be noncommercial in order to utilize volunteer content. The bottom line is, you can't expect to routinely get great content for nothing.