Andrew Sullivan announced Wednesday, via Twitter, that his soon-to-be-self-published blog has just passed $500,000 in pre-subscription sales [3]. The announcement comes less than a month after Sullivan--whose recent homes include the Daily Beast, The Atlantic, and Time--disclosed that he was turning his popular The Dish blog into a profit-generating independent business [4].

The new, independent The Dish is pre-selling subscriptions for $19.95 and uses metering technology from startup Tinypass [5]. In 2011, Fast Company explored the psychology behind the New York Times' firewall [6].

[Image: Flickr user Trey Ratcliff [7]]