People who support the server have greater voting rights; no revenue steam. But I think it would be cool to sell pirate plushies!

Unrelated: If you code it’s not hard to insert ads in between the comments on your own lemmy instance. It would be a cool experience but probably would create significant vitriol and site wide bannings by most, if not all, major instances for trying.

The problem for most monitization is psychological only ; many ideas would be an unwinnable uphill battle. Yes, can put ads in but also be a leper with zero traffic. You could probably put in perks if have good coding skills or can hire good skills; but if public relations done wrong then you are “poison to the community”.

You could try to do awards ( Reddit gold) but may get laughed off the platform. It’s a tough crowd