<i>"I just try to write good stuff."</i><p>The article's author might consider that a humorous quip, but I think that's the crux of it, really. DF is always well written and usually well researched (and when it isn't, for whatever reason, he will follow up with a correction). Unlike others, John's not scared of going into technical detail where necessary.
$125,000 in annual revenue is way low.<p>The Daring Fireball feed sponsorship costs $2,500 for _one week_. That’s $130,000 a year right there.<p><a href="http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" rel="nofollow">http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/</a><p>The Deck pulls in $180,000 a month with 45 affiliated content sources. So if the profits are divided equally, or if Gruber earns the average revenue, then that’s $4000 a month. Some of the affiliate blogs hardly ever produce content and other blogs hide the ad at the bottom of the page, so I doubt that they divide revenue equally between them. I’d be very surprised if Daring Fireball didn’t pull down at least 3 times the Deck average. Call it $150,000.<p><a href="http://decknetwork.net/" rel="nofollow">http://decknetwork.net/</a><p>That would put us at $280,000 per year even before T-Shirt sales.
Gruber's talk with Merlin Mann from this year's SXSW is a gem.<p><a href="http://daringfireball.net/2009/03/obsession_times_voice" rel="nofollow">http://daringfireball.net/2009/03/obsession_times_voice</a><p><a href="http://www.43folders.com/2009/03/25/blogs-turbocharged" rel="nofollow">http://www.43folders.com/2009/03/25/blogs-turbocharged</a>
Gruber is polarising, but that's precisely why he's so successful.<p>Much as I think he's a bit obnoxious, I read his blog regularly. I really admire his respect for his craft (vs say, techcrunch), as well as the niche he's carved out for himself.
Anybody else having (regular) troubles accessing articles at The Daring Fireball? For me it usually takes very long time till they appear, sometimes it just times out.<p>It's weird that with such revenue he doesn't use some better hosting and/or CMS.
I read Daring Fireball, and I think the writing is excellent, but I've always thought it was a close cousin of astroturfing.<p>Here's how it works in my head:<p>1) Gruber writes stuff Apple likes
2) Apple feeds Gruber exclusive information
3) More people read Gruber for exclusive information, seeing a message that Apple likes
4) Gruber profits from increased traffic, and tries to continue to please Apple<p>Maybe I'm way off base, but Apple is so damn secretive that the information he gets must somehow be approved. It's like Apple doesn't allow their employees to blog, except Gruber.