Andrew Sullivan says it’s “unlikely” The Dish will reach its $900,000 goal

When Andrew Sullivan, founder of the popular politics blog The Dish, announced in January that he was leaving the Daily Beast and taking the blog independent, the goal was to raise $ 900,000 to keep business up and running in the first year. After an early influx of reader subscriptions, though, the money has been flowing in much more slowly, and Sullivan said in a blog post Tuesday that it’s “unlikely” the Dish will reach its goal.

“We’re still chugging along steadily in revenue, and we are brainstorming about new sources of income (stay tuned),” Sullivan wrote. The site had raised $ 680,000 as of Tuesday, up from $ 653,000 as of March 25.

“The most passionate readers have already joined. It gets harder after that,” Sullivan wrote. As he noted at the paidContent Live conference in New York last month (see video below), he is not taking a salary for the first year.

The Dish has already tweaked its payment model a few times. Initially, the site charged a minimum of $ 19.99 per year for unlimited access to premium content; in March, it lowered the meter and added a monthly payment option.