John Gruber, writer of one of my favorite blogs, Daring Fireball, will complete his first year of blogging for a living on April 20. In April 2006, John quit his regular gig to live full time off of writing his blog. It has been a successful experiment so far.

As with last year, John is looking for members to pay $19 annually to keep him afloat (there’s also membership free with any t-shirt purchase). Members receive access to full RSS feeds and other goodies that the general public can’t access. Plus, during the three-week membership drive (and since the beginning of the year, it seems), members are eligible for a raffle including 128 prizes (at last count).

An interesting concept, no? In a way, it reminds me of public broadcasting pledge drives, and it results in a similar high-quality, low-ad volume product that informs and entertains in ways that traditional broadcasts/blogs don’t often reach.

So, if you like DF (if you’ve never been, give it a look), consider supporting him. The membership drive ends tonight, but I’m sure that he’ll be glad to take you as a member any time.

I eagerly await the results of how successful this latest drive has been, as a bellwether for blogs as an independent, reader-supported business model. (Full disclosure: I’ve sent in my bucks.)