I've researched Paywall vs Features request (https://features.etleneum.com/hypecoinnews) and wrote a post about this experiment in Russian. Shortly speaking for public telegram channel Features are beneficial. They also allow to select more demanded topics while with paywall it is more like gambling -- hard to find most valuable topic to work on and the result may be easily mispriced.

Thus, from my personal experience direct/specific donations are much better than paywall.