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It’s sort of ironic that his latest content, for the last few months, has been more trivia and links and less indepth coverage. I’m not saying that his stuff is bad, but that he moved aways from a more “professional” area into the more “traditional” blogging stereotypes.

All in all, I imagine the novelty of this approch will get him some subscribers, people who like the idea more than the actual content, but I really don’t see this as a viable financing option for anyting other than small sites.

Also, I imagine he’ll be doing freelance design jobs, since he hopes to cover less than half of his current income, so it’s not full-time blogging in a sense… not 8 hours/day, at least. If he were to do it for 8 hours/day, his readership would be overwhelmed by the influx of content…

http://www.diveintomark.org/ used to be the best blog on the net in my opinion - but it Mark has been on blogging vaction for some time now.

Having said that, I do not think I would ever be willing to pay for content.

Gabriel:

his latest content … has been more trivia and links and less indepth coverage

True, but I expect that’ll change with his move to full-time blogging.

All in all, I imagine the novelty of this approch will get him some subscribers, people who like the idea more than the actual content, but I really don’t see this as a viable financing option for anyting other than small sites.

I completely agree Gabriel. That is the point I was slyly suggesting with my post. The simple fact is, there are no blogs that I would voluntarily pay for. Indeed, apart from my subscription to salon.com, there are no websites that I would pay to access, blog or otherwise.

This is probably because there is no information that can be gleaned from a paid website that can’t be acquired, free, elsewhere on the net. There is opinion though, and if I valued Kottke’s opinion enough, then I would probably be prepared to pay for it.

So yes Gabriel, Kottke will make money, of that I am certain. But I suspect he’ll make money mainly from other bloggers - ie: readers with a vested interest in making paid-for-blogging work. He also make money from those who simply feel that what he is doing is noble and who will thus pay to support him. Is this charity?

I imagine he’ll be doing freelance design jobs

Again I agree. Kottke says he’ll be blogging full-time but, with a reduced income, I expect he’ll accept contract work in due course.

Noah:

http://www.diveintomark.org/ used to be the best blog on the net in my opinion

I’ll second that.

There are some opinions on angiemckaig.com that are worth reading.

I also have to admire mr. Kottke for doing this. It takes guts to follow your dream, whatever that may be.

With that said I was never really a fan of his blog. Too many links, and IMHO not so interesting writing. Not that it wasn’t good writing or a good weblog, it just never appealed to me.

I know that John Gruber (www.daringfireball.net) tries to do the same (i.e. make a living off of blogging)… He’s doing it by putting ads on the site.