Sergio

I use prepaid cards for Twitch and similar online services. It’s great because they always try to dark-pattern you into subscriptions, but then they’re all plaintive when your account runs out and they don’t have a credit card to perpetually drain. (actually, it’s more like “stages of grief”… first it’s alarmist: “your payment has failed!!!” then it’s businesslike: “remember to re-subscribe!” THEN it’s plaintive: “(name of performer) misses you on Our Moneydraining Platform!” then it’s nostalgic: “remember the good times you had on Our Moneydraining Platform? It’s not too late to re-subscribe!”) However, there’s usually a slight extra charge for the cards.

Cash irl is great but a slight downside is making sure you’re always carrying enough. Also, if you drop it somewhere it’s just gone.

There are countless other ‘niche’ communities that have no posts for months, however.

Hey, have you seen [email protected]? It’s got a lot of discussions on how to handle this.

I think that to grow a niche community, you need at least 2-3 regular posters, and you need to make posts that encourage discussion (i.e. ask questions or provoke a thoughtful reaction that readers would like to share.)

Also keep an eye on: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/stats A couple thousand people (and several communities) moved there after lemm.ee died, but we interact with lemmy.

As for why it subjectively seems to be declining… maybe you know what you’re gonna see in New, and so you engage less with posts? Maybe it’s time to be more of a poster!