You can change the pay any way you like but it still boils down the same.

If a site costs $20k you can pay it in fiat, do it in Hive, or come up
With some delegation deal but in the end you are still out $20k, the means doesn’t change that. It just allows people without the funds to come up with alternative ways.

For me it isn’t the lack of funds. I just can’t justify the costs with the limited use of STEMGeeks. I also find the site works perfectly fine for what it is, it is 99% Hive users and they are accustomed to the condenser interface. Changing it isn’t going to change much of anything.

Another factor is there is zero revenue from STEMGeeks. I burn all author and curation rewards on a weekly basis. In fact it costs me money to maintain it (not a lot mind you). Ads would degrade the user experience and would make pennies.

I don’t make a better website because I can’t figure out how or can’t afford it, I don’t because it wouldn’t change things much at all and the lack of revenue doesn’t justify the time and costs.

There is another big factor you are missing to the puzzle. Once you do this, you are now completely responsible for all updates and all issues when changes come and break things, like hard forks. For many they are lucky enough to even get a dev to reliably finish a project, down the road when things break? Forget it the odds go from 30% success rate of finishing the project to 5% for them to be around when you need them in the future. Right now the Hive Engine team maintains updates (very infrequently unless something breaks) and I don’t have to worry about that. This is very helpful for a project that loses money.

Sure I can make a site. Sure I can make a better site than any of the other tribes if I was so inclined. Unless it will magically onboard hundreds of users a day, it’s hard to justify it when the most successful of all sites only onboards a handful of people.