Daring Fireball

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The Daring Fireball logo.

Daring Fireball is the web site of John Gruber, a Mac enthusiast, technology pundit, and writer. Daring Fireball hosts Gruber's opinions in the form of a blog, and also some of Gruber's software. In April 2006, it became Gruber's sole full time job with the help of advertisement and "membership" income.^[1]

1 Style and content
2 Monetization
3 Daring Fireball as a full-time job
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Style and content

Gruber has described his Daring Fireball writing as a "Mac column in the form of a weblog",^[2] with emphasis on the "column" part rather than the "weblog" part. The articles tend to run long and stay focused on at most a handful of points, rarely straying from the subject, and as a result often spark discussion in the Mac community.

Common article subjects are the media's reflections on Apple's affairs (especially refuting of myths and misunderstandings), user interfaces (and the consistency thereof), software development and emerging Mac applications. Gruber also runs a linklog called The Linked List (presumably a pun on the data structure) where brief commentary is provided, and the List shows up interweaved with the longer articles on the front page by default.

[edit] Monetization

The original Daring Fireball T-shirt.

The revised Daring Fireball "Helmet" T-shirt and the Oddica bag it shipped in.

The revised Daring Fireball "Helmet"^[3] T-shirt and the Oddica bag it shipped in.

^{[citation needed]} Since 2006, the site displays advertisements from The Deck, a small 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 even allow a choice of local Amazon store.

Since 2004, Gruber has solicited memberships,^[4] 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".^[5] Perhaps as better "tote bags", Daring Fireball motif T-shirts are also sold—the T-shirts include a membership, and members get a discount on further T-shirts. There is no members-only content, however; all of the site's content is freely available, and in early August 2007, Gruber made all of the site's feeds freely available as well.^[6]

[edit] Daring Fireball as a full-time job

Gruber has on numerous occasions expressed his desire to be able to write Daring Fireball as his sole source of income.^[5]^[7]^[8] In late April 2006, Gruber quit his job in order to pursue Daring Fireball for a living, funded by advertisement revenue, membership fees, T-shirt sales, and donations from various software projects also hosted on the site, like Markdown.^[1]

Gruber's last account about his Daring Fireball income before starting to write it full-time detailed it in the ballpark of a substantial side income, but much too short of a full-time wage.^[8] For most of the time when Daring Fireball was a spare time endeavour, Gruber worked as an independent web designer; between late 2005 and April 2006, Gruber's day job was at Joyent where he helped with the TextDrive acquisition.

The first year of full-time Daring Fireball saw Gruber expand into other venues than just the sites, including several podcast appearances and a Macworld Expo panel spot on Macworld's dime.^[9] Gruber also covered WWDC 2006 on location.