Of course, the whole "how dare you ask me to pay to play this" is part of, honestly, why mushing is so far behind the times. Hosting often costs money. It takes staff time. All of that is "money" in some form. And yet the players are all "why, how dare you ask me to pay money??!?!?!!?WTF?!?!? What makes you think I have money?" I've seen people talking about college students, who are apparently begging on the street corners like little Orphan Oliver, going "May I have some more, sir?" rather than buying $8.00 lattes at Starbucks except waitnotheyaren't.
You want the solution to some of mushing's woes? Look to the pay to play models on MMOs. These companies make money hand over fist, even on "free to play" MMOs. One basic idea (on the good ones) is you can either spend your time, or spend your money. Invent a virtual currency like these games do. Hand them over for time-spent. You're online, you're active? Congratulations, you earn 5 ArrPee a week. You can spend 20 to buy yourself a "Premiere character slot", which you can spend on playing something that honestly will work fine, but which we in our batshit mush culture have decided would break the universe if everyone got to play it because no one wants to be a special snowflake ever.
Orrrrrr, you can Paypal to a game account, and 1 dollar gets you 5 ArrPee. If you told me I could either have to get +votes or submit logs or WTFery else five times a week to get my 5 ArrPee, or I could just kick in 4 bucks to do the same? Fuck, I can't buy LUNCH for 4 bucks. Here. Hell, have a tip. Give me my shinies and let me burn my time having FUN. Someone who in theory can't afford 4 bucks? (And if not, how do they have a computer?) Let them earn it.