Would you trade ads for a monthly payment? Google wants users to rethink the way their favorite websites are funded.

The company on Thursday launched a beta program called Contributor by Google. With a handful of participating websites, the program is focused on enabling people to make a monthly contribution to a website in lieu of seeing ads on it.

“Today’s Internet is mostly funded by advertising,” the company wrote on its Contributor site. “But what if there were a way to directly support the people who create the sites you visit each day?”

Here’s how it works at this point. Beta users can choose between participating sites, which include WikiHow, the Onion and Mashable. Then they can opt to pay between $1 and $3 a month.

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