Monetizing relays is not “making Nostr inaccessible unless you pay.” I think you misunderstand the bigger picture here.  Read some of the thread, there are a ton of great ideas and no one is talking about making it so new users can’t join and start exploring and commenting for free. You are completely correct on that point, it would relegate this space to a tiny group, which would defeat the purpose I laid out above, is how do we *avoid* that. 

In that sense, I’m hoping for thoughts and feedback on how we can find this ecosystem, *without* the barrier you correctly identify. 

 no bitcoin company except for exchanges, podcasts and hardware wallets was ever able to monetize 

 What is your opinion of a hybrid system?
Some relays could be free, others advertising sponsored and other paid by users for access to specific info or ad free notes. 

 Free Relays owned and operated by ad companies and data farms would thrive. It's their business to gather intel so why not host and serve it in order to obtain? 

That's the point. I think you only have to pay when you get cancelled or censored. Let others get dirty hands.

Free relays should be pitching to these people!
https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/top-advertising-agencies-uk 

 I would expect that people who make money on Nostr will be interested in a good infrastructure. So if McDonalds sells burgers on Nostr they maybe want to make sure that there are some working relays. 
There could also be some enthusiasts like the people on the fediverse right now.
Third option I see are payed premium relays which offer special services.
 

 I am also thinking that trading communities would be willing to run their own releays or someone in that community would like to sponsor one. 

 From what I’ve heard in my thread, making contributions transparent, where they go to the right people with no thought or effort on the users end, and premium services, are really what users are interested in atm. I think just the first part of that would help a lot of us get out of the red at least. 

 There’s also a bigger picture here. Your “free” Internet accounts on Facebook, Twitter etc are not free, you are the product. Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple own your data and your accounts you have on their systems are their accounts, not yours.

On contrast, this is my relay with MY data on it, I make it available for others to see, but it’s my account and my data. I hold the keys to my npub and nobody can take that away from me. If I didn’t own my relay, then I should pay a tiny amount of money to use somebody else’s relay. Not a large corporate, but a person like you or me who’s using their own money to run a computer for their or others use.


https://image.nostr.build/fc878150710ea83e7071241eb50621fffe6160dd45376a914734a2a773af7e03.png 

 I second that. Especially as setting up the nodes is so damn easy with tooling like umbrel.

I guess it's still a lot about awareness. People need _really_ to understand that they are already paying for the services they use (but not in monetary units) it might be easier to help them in the migration away from it.

We will need something like "here is an easy solution to self-host" or "here is an even easier solution to pay other relays to make it worth their while"
https://image.nostr.build/441b84dd5db666f94888b0f36189f493320cd62a991e41c6e96e58822b57c061.png