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I wonder how many artists would make LESS money if there weren't sites like this that act as advertisement? And I don't say that sarcastically. I never heard of any of these Lezhin comics except through MangaGo showing it in updates. I remember paying a quarter per chapter over at Netcomics. Or getting a whole volume of a manga for 3.99 for the digital version at Amazon. That's 3.99 for 5 to 7 chapters.
I checked out a manhwa at Lezhin and it was 3 dollars equivalent for one chapter. Um, no. If the price were more like 50 cents per chapter, I'd pay. If 1000 people paid 50 cents per chapter, that's $500 per chapter. (Some get more than 1000 readers, some far more.) The artist isn't gonna get half (most goes to Google and the site/distributor), so the author might get $100 per chapter based on how they pay. But if that's a 50 chapter work, that's $5000 income.
I wish there was way for artists to cooperate in union fashion, open a site, and charge less, so 10s of thousands would happily pay per chapter. The author would keep more than 50%, since they'd have to chip in for the distribution site. But that would mean, at the rate above, 25 cents per chapter or $250 per chapter per 1000 readers.
Admittedly, $3 per chapter is putting it out of the range of most readers, especially the very young, non-employed ones. They're gonna go read it on free sites.
The future should be that the ones reaping the greatest reward is the artist, NOT the distributor and Google. That means artists better start banding together to offer their own works and taking the lion's share. That means bye-bye Lezhin and hellow artists.
The nature of the modern market, whether it's music or novels or manhwa or films, people want to pay less for streaming items they don't own. I don't own what streams--be it a digital book or a comic on an online site. It's not mine. I just "rent" it. If it's not mine and I just rent it, then it should cost way less. Look at digital books--you can get a lot for 99 cents (100K to read). A song for $1.29 that you can play over and over (few of us read a comic chapter over and over and over for years like we will a song).
Let's see if the artists smarten up.
Also, they can do Patreon and get support from fans for special targeted releases. There are ways for artists to make money--now and to come. They should focus on that because distributors aren't the creators. They should not make MORE than creators.
And we can then pay less.