Has Access To The Internet "Cheapened" The Arts Especially Photography?

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I've been involved with the photographic world for a LONG time. As a child and teen years I used to "borrow" my mother's vintage Kodak Brownie camera. It wasn't until around 1975 however that I got my first 35mm film camera. I became hooked, so much so I took courses and learned how to develop black and white film and prints, which led me to get darkroom equipment and I would transform my kitchen into a darkroom. I then got equipment such as studio lights and would transform my living room into a photo studio and would do commercial studio photography based on holiday themes. Then I tried my luck in getting my photography published and started sending portfolios of my work to various magazines, etc. One had to send work the old fashioned way...that is mail one's portfolios to the company or magazine. Sure enough, I had my first photo published on the cover of a magazine for their April 1980 issue....the pay was $100.00 for just that one photo. In the following years a good deal of my work was published and yes for around the same pay. In 1996, a lot of "circumstances" came into my life and I had to stop my photo work yet in the back of my mind, I had hoped to resume my work. Zoom up many years. It wasn't until 2007 that I was able to get my own computer and I had hoped to become "established" and hoped to really get my work published like crazy, but I was to discover that the "rules" changed, not only due to the internet, but digital photography and those "microstock" photo websites. There are a good number of those types of websites, and they all seem to run the same way. A "client" etc. can download an image for about $2.00 or $3.00 and since it's royalty free licensing once downloaded that client can re-use that image as many times as they want without any further compensation to the photographer. And what is the usual pay to the photographer? Are you sitting down? 0.25¢ In the back of my mind I'm still yearning to get my photography published, but have become very discouraged about it all. So..number one has anyone found a really GOOD outlet to sell their photowork and preferably using the one-time publishing rights rather than royalty free, and do you think the internet has "cheapened" the arts...this could go for written work also. I include a collection of just some of my previously published work.