It has indeed enabled the professionalization of the endeavor, but the shift in incentives for content creation has irreversibly changed the shape of the mainstream internet, and not necessarily for the better as far as the user is concerned.

The monetized web has in a lot of measures exceeded the frontiers of what the ragtag petite bourgeoisie of the early internet could ever be but, in the process, the great majority of us (both users and the very long tail of non-top content creators) have invariably become peasants.

I'm not saying there was any other way to have what we have now, but what we have now kinda ain't sooo good when one isn't the middleman in a process architected for the middleman's benefit.