THIRTY CENTS per page view @preparedwombat, it was stunning. But then again, it almost required a degree in rocket science to actually GET a page view, back then... well, not quite. And then it became 3 cents, and everyone went "waaaahhh!" They were burning through their "angel funding" at an insane rate.
Remarkably, I kept getting royalty payments till-- I think-- 2014 or 2015.
Flawed or not, the eventual system of members and "category managers" with different levels of voting power did somewhat contain and sort the pure garbage for quite a few years.
Point here being that they did address the issue of spam and spun content rather than pretend it would not be a serious problem.