I miss n-gate. I hope whoever they were is doing OK...
FWIW - the homepage here say's this Lemmy instance has 182 monthly users. That post says it's costing $49/month to run it.
That means "your share" of the costs, assuming everybody chips in, would be about $0.30 per month.
A much more realistic assumption is that maybe 10% (and probably less) of all users will pay up, so if you want to have this place thrive without the admin/owner wondering how much money they're gonna have to pony up themselves you should be thinking that your "ad free" experience here deserves a donation of at least $3 per month. I figure $5 per month isn';t gonna hurt me, and signed up to donate that. (you're welcome, any of you other 17 or so other people who can't afford to support aussie.zone...)
Reddit was enshittified because they need the ad revenue to pay out their investors. Let's not make Lodion wonder WFT he's doing running aussie.zone because he's out of pocket every month in hosting costs...