Whether due to income equality, laziness, greed or something else, the vast majority of people aren't going to engage in micro transactions.
I think the answer is in federation and mutually owned infrastructure.
People are comfortable paying Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll $10-15 per month. They don't have to worry about "do I want to watch this episode enough to spend 45 cents for it?" or "do I need to make and manage a whole new account just to watch a different show?" The fact the money eventually gets divvied up to content creators is handwaved away behind the scenes.
Federation gives other creators the opportunity to sell a similar one-stop-shopping experience you that. I could imagine, say, a subscription where I'd get through the paywall not just on my local newspaper, but the dozens of other papers that might print one or two articles a month that I care about. Or a Patreon-style service where you unlocked everyone for a flat fee, and they use analytics to determine how much of the fee goes to each creator each month.
The problem is that most of the content is living on third-party platforms. An OnlyFans or YouTube, for example, could offer a subscription around that model, but they'd just vaccuum up most of the revenue generated for themselves. The creators have to own the platform themselves to prevent that sort of diversion.
It’s funny that you use Netflix as an example because that’s what they originally tried to do and it didn’t work.
Yes, it involves customized billing and account infrastructure, but if you set things up properly, the cost of the infrastructure should be less than the revenue it provides. If the federated content creators, in turn, fund a "captive" development and maintenance team to supply things at cost, it may well be cheaper than leasing off-the-shelf solutions.
If you're a YouTuber why would you even deal with any of that vs. just continuing to upload on YouTube?