Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, generated a little more than $875,000 in its first year of operation, just under the goal he publicly set.
The site now counts about 34,000 subscribers which, along with about $24,000 in Amazon affiliate revenue, accounts for all of the company's income, Sullivan told Mashable on Thursday. The Daily Dish hosts no ads or sponsored content.
After accepting pre-subscriptions starting on Jan. 2, 2013, Sullivan brought in $611,000 in less than two months. After that initial rush, revenue fluctuated around $20,000 per month, with a spike in the the last three months of the year.
Meeting the site's revenue goal was important, but long-term success will depend on the red line in the graph above. Only about a quarter of Dish subscriptions will auto renew, and of that there is no data on what percentage of that group is yearly versus monthly. This leaves the site vulnerable for a large amount of churn -- paying customers who may leave the site when their subscriptions are up. Sullivan wrote in a blog post on his site:
"Almost 9,000 of [Dish subscribers] are now on auto-renew, and if our 25,000 original supporters renew next year in numbers comparable with the very beginning, then we’ll finally have a solid basis for a ongoing, entirely-online blogazine with no sponsored content and (so far) no advertizing."
Assuming that those 25,000 supporters each paid $19.99 for the annual subscription, that would mean just less than $500,000 or 57% of the Dish's revenue is about to come up for renewal.
That renewal date will kick in on Feb. 4, the one-year anniversary of the site's editorial launch.