Daring Fireball - Revenue

Revenue

Since 2004, Gruber has solicited memberships, where readers donate an amount of money annually to show support for Gruber's writing and also to gain access to other perks. The perks included more detailed feeds, but Gruber has downplayed the importance of the extra features, comparing them to "PBS tote bags". Daring Fireball logo T-shirts are also sold, which include a membership and a discount on further T-shirts. All of the site's content is freely available, and in August 2007, Gruber made all of the site's feeds freely available as well, and each week the feed features a sponsor.

Gruber's last account of his part-time Daring Fireball income called it a substantial side income, short of a full-time salary. For most of the time when Daring Fireball was a part-time project, Gruber worked as an independent web designer; between late 2005 and April 2006, Gruber's main job was at Joyent where he helped with the TextDrive acquisition.

Since 2006, the site displays advertisements from The Deck, an advertising network serving sites like A List Apart and 37signals in addition to Daring Fireball. In addition to this, many Amazon.com links carry Daring Fireball's referral ID, and the site's preferences include a choice of local Amazon store.

As of November 2012, Gruber charges $8,500 per week for RSS feed sponsorship which includes a "promotional item during the week" and a "linked list item" to the sponsor at the end of the week.