Andrew Sullivan Finds Success With Paid Blogging Model

Posted on January 8, 2013

Blogger Andrew Sullivan is leaving The Daily Beast and returning his blog to his website, andrewsullivan.com. Sullivan decided to go with a paid blogging model. In the announcement, Sullivan said the decision not to use advertising on the relocated blog was the hardest.

The decision on advertising was the hardest, because obviously it provides a vital revenue stream for almost all media products. But we know from your emails how distracting and intrusive it can be; and how it often slows down the page painfully. And we're increasingly struck how advertising is dominated online by huge entities, and how compromising and time-consuming it could be for so few of us to try and lure big corporations to support us. We're also mindful how online ads have created incentives for pageviews over quality content.

Sullivan went with an initial annual subscription price of $19.99 a year for his blog, the Dish. He is well on his way to having a successful paid blog. In just 24 hours, The Dish obtained about 12,000 paid subscribers and brought in about $333,000.

Venture Beat reports that Sullivan estimates he needs about $900,000 in revenues a year to run his blog ad-free at its current level of content. Venture Beat also says Sullivan has partnered with Tinypass for site metering services.