Paywalls don't work. Patreon-style subscriptions yes, but paywalls no.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/announcement-2
SMBC comics parts ways with their ad provider, leaving them without any income.
I really wish I could just pay with lightning to see content. Are there any easy to use lightning paywalls? Surely someone could write some simple JavaScript to do this. It doesn't need to be completely secure.
Discussion
Paywalls haven't been tried much with a payment method that doesn't suck.
Last year someone sent me a link to a video that needed an NFT to access. I wrote back, “How do I see this video without shitcoining?”
They do work. Someone made a demo and it's the first time I ever paid to read an article. It was like $0.25 USD worth of BTC. Paid over lightning with a qr code that was generated and the article instantly unlocked. I wish I could remember who or where I saw it, but someone has made one. It exists, and itwass magical to use. I would pay for a lot more content if it was always that easy.
Blog posts and JPGs can't have market prices. What stops me from paying the 25 cents once, taking a screenshot, and releasing it for everyone for free? 
https://dergigi.com/2022/12/18/a-vision-for-a-value-enabled-web/
"It doesn't make sense to charge for access to code or content, because it's not that too many people are consuming the good itself. It's the production—not consumption—of [content] that suffers from too much demand."
- Nadia Eghbal
Nothing stops you, but nothing stops you now. People could do that with the smbc comics. But the websites could have a "pay to remove ads" option.
Also, if there is a link to the article, there will be some amount of people who will pay the lightning invoice, if only to support the creator.
Does this one suck? It's similar to the one I tried years ago: https://yalls.org/articles/97d67df1-d721-417d-a6c0-11d793739be9:0965AC5E-56CD-4870-9041-E69616660E6F/729489e3-bda0-4eb0-8df1-c3a7053589b3
I have no affiliation with this site or the poster of that article, it's just an example of a LN paywall.
Yes, yalls.org is why I said paywalls hadn't been tried much. Not not at all!
It's pretty good. I just wish there was an easy way to implement that on, say, my blog.
Still can't find the one I was looking for. Did find this: https://rukundo.mataroa.blog/blog/i-built-a-blogging-platform-powered-by-the-lightning-network/
The repo is a but dated, but it might still work.
Thanks!