Pieces may go behind paywall (like our site or iTulip) but they both still share lotes & sites like KhanAcademy offer tons of great accessible content.
The big issue though is that in most markets people have to get a bit shook down before they find what they need. I remember thinking that search and ads were going to be huge when I bought Inktomi & DoubleClick stock during the last stock bubble. I of course got my head served on a platter on that, but it was cool to get into search a few years later & be right that time. The Google IPO gains made up for the losses on the earlier bets, but everything comes down to timing & then just sticking with something you believe in.
The first site you find in any category won't likely be the best one, just the one which is the most heavily marketed. But the same was true before their was a web.
The hard part with paid content is that the more common it becomes the harder it is for Google or other ad networks to take a big slice of the value chain. For that reason I see the move to paid online content being a slow one (outside of niche b2b sort of environments).