Well, oh the dramaz! 

As a woman who has been modding for over a decade, I fully support this change, and If anything Beth should have done this much sooner.  A career as a modder? yes please.
My mods on Nexus will always be on Nexus, and they will always be free on Nexus.  My mods on Steam, will be paid mods. 

Many people only use Steam for mods, because they are young, because they are young and have their parents credit cards, because they are adults scared of virus’s from Nexus, because they do not know how to google or because they have the cash and expect a hassle free process.

In the long term this is an amazing opportunity. I now have a reason not only to mod, but to get better at it, knowing that I will be reimbursed for my time.  Time which otherwise I should spend in a paid employment so that I can pay my rent and bills.  This will benefit my free mods on Nexus. I am now fixing all the bugs, and updating all of mods on Nexus.  Anything I created 100% myself will be uploaded to Steam for a bargain price.  This has encouraged me to spend my spare time modding again instead of playing video games. In the past I have always relied on ZzJay to help me with meshes, and while I will still ask her noob questions, now I know I will need to up my skill set and become more professional.  This is a good thing.

Most mods on nexus, will remain free due to the fact that they are collaborations, or contain other people’s assets.  I do not believe this will damage the community.  I believe it will help it.
In the long run, mods will be better quality and more professional.
As for the Steam service providers cut.  Blender is on that list and I always choose them. They deserve it.  Their software is better than any paid software that I have tried, and Nifskope is so easy to learn that it provides a great way in to learning to mesh.

I know this has been a bumpy start,  it is expected that non modders, basic modders and people under the age of 16 would be very unhappy, and many people simply are scared of change.  What has not helped at all are Isoku and Chesko’s actions.  Isoku should not have released such a commonly used rewrite of his most popular mod behind a pay wall and Chesko needs a thicker skin.  Chesko made a mistake.  We forgive him, now get on with it!  I believe programmers will have the hardest time adjusting.  They spend hundreds of hours on their code, which is magic.  Now they just need to see those meshes, textures and animations that other people spent hundreds of hours on too and realise they need to split their profits or create them themselves.  We will all take time to adjust, and we will need to help each other to adjust.  Knee jerk reactions are not helping anyone and are in fact, point in case the two advanced adult modders above, driving the better modders away.

After writing this article i sent it to a wide demographic on my friends list.  The responses were as expected, good, bad and ugly.

ZzJay pointed out that this evolution of modding will encourage more and more people to learn how to tweak .esp’s and create basic mods. Also she is considering creating more tutorials now as they will be needed, now more than ever.  When i started modding back in the Morrowind days, I did it because I really wanted too, I saw what was on offer and knew I could do better.  Now I will see mods that I do not want to pay for and create myself.  I think this is great.

TL:DR
I think this is a wonderful advancement in our evolution. My mods on Nexus will always be free. My mods on Steam will be paid.  Do not be too harsh on modders over the coming weeks.  We all need time to adjust.