Here's the thing - it's a little like a gym membership. If the fee gives heavy users value, and enough people pay the fee but never show up to do the work, the gym will thrive. Finding that sweet spot, and offering sufficient value to the users who show up, is key.

On GEnie, that LiveWire magazine was all the "advertising" they had. They had no graphics to speak of - it was all text based. Blazingly fast, we thought - even when only the wealthy "cool kids" had anything faster than a 2400 baud modem. And it was sociable. (Yes, there were trolls and fraudsters, but they were somewhat funnier and generally nicer people than the ones we deal with, today.) We had email, but I don't recall spam. And honestly, why bother with it? On a closed system that everyone's paying for by the hour, why waste time like that? There were so many more FUN ways to "waste time" (which is what everyone who wasn't there assumed we were doing - and they may have been correct).