My use-case is probably different from new users looking for pubs: I'd be happy to pay a monthly subscription to a low-volume pub with great uptime, whereas a one-time cost seems like it would have to continue growing to be sustainable. I've unfollowed all pubs because I don't want to replicate people within hops of a pub, but I do enjoy the high uptime and I'd be happy to pay for it.

Totally possible that I'm the only one looking for that sort of thing, but it's a data point.