Andrew Sullivan has launched another pledge drive:
This site isn’t free; I haven’t sold it to a bigger media entity; as a professional writer whose time is increasingly taken up with the blog – over 500 emails and up to a dozen posts a day, sometimes seven days a week, around the clock – I need a salary of sorts; and although we’ve done all we can to keep expenses low, we’re still hard-put to make it to the end of the year without your support. . . . All we ask is $20 a year if you read this page more than a couple of times a week.
Sully is one of the better writers out there although, frankly, his blog sometimes gets on a hobby horse and rides it well past the point where I’m interested.
I’m a little curious about the finances of blog superstardom. Little OTB only costs a few bucks a month and I’ve got bandwidth to spare. Can it be that expensive to run a Top 10 blog? The most expensive plan on HostingMatters is just $36 a month, less if you pay by the year. Sully has 4000+ contributors giving $20+ a year. That’s $80,021 at a minimum. And, frankly, he doesn’t post much more than I do, although he apparently gets a wee bit more e-mail.
Of course, if everyone who reads OTB more than twice a week would send me $20, I’d appreciate it. I’m not sure what I’d do with that $40, but I’d think of something.
Update (22:31) michele is much more annoyed at this than I am. Plus, she apparently has boobs. Who knew?
