Direct Sponsorship vs Ads

One of John Gruber's tweets over on Daring Fireball caught my eye, so I clicked through and saw his otherwise sparse site adorned with an ad for Morning Brew.

I've been enjoying Morning Brew, and thought "Cool, is Gruber somehow involved in that?"

Nope.  It turns out he's selling weekly sponsorships on his blog.  In an age of sites adorned by arbitrary ads, it's refreshing to see such a restrained approach to monetizing a popular site.  I have no idea how much he charges, but I'm sure he picks sponsors who he doesn't mind being associated with.  In contrast to whatever garbage the various ad networks inject in your site.

Nice gig if you can get it.  I don't think anyone is going to pay to advertise to the couple-of-dozen people who might read this.