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I subscribe to a bunch of webcomics via RSS, and a few have changed over the years from embedding the comic into the feed to just having the feed be a link to the comic page so that they can still get some ad impressions.

I also subscribe to email newsletters that have sponsored links/blurbs in their content, and I'm sure that one could monetize RSS content similarly.

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I was so annoyed at the fact that I couldn't see the web comic in my feed reader that I wrote plugins for TT-RSS which would on the fly replace them with the original size pictures: https://github.com/jeena/tt-rss-plugins/blob/master/jp_stutt...

I don't know where exactly xkcd lands on the web comic popularity scale, but let's be conservative and say Top 3. The xkcd RSS feed embeds the image (and alt text) into posts. That is very clearly a deliberate decision. The comics themselves are also CC-licensed.

I feel like Randall Munroe is doing well for himself. The math is probably different for smaller players.

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