Arnold Kim launched an independent blog on February 24, 2000 called MacRumors.com.  Kim launched it in his fourth year of medical school.  Eventually Kim quit his job as a doctor to focus on his blog full-time.  Today MacRumors receives 7 million unique visitors per month and receives some of the highest traffic out of all the Apple Inc. centered blogs.  MacRumors aggregates rumors from around the web and from message boards regarding upcoming Apple products and services.  

When Apple accidentally published details about a Power Mac G5 five years ago, Kim quickly grabbed that information and published it.  Apple’s legal team had to contact Kim to remove the information, but the news had already gotten around and MacRumors’ traffic has been steadily increasing ever since.  MacRumors is now 10 years old and we congratulate Kim on all of his success. [Wired]

Blogs are becoming an lucrative business.  paidContent sold for close to $30 million, Ars Technica sold for about $15-$20 million, and AlleyInsider raised funding recently.  The New York Times recently covered the story of Arnold Kim M.D., the founder of MacRumors.com.   

Over the last 8 years, Arnold Kim wrote rumors about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) on his blog.  While he was writing on the blog, he was also earning his medical degree.  Over the last several years, Kim was training on how to diagnose patients with kidney problems.  Kim’s blog now receives about 4.4 million uniques and 40 million pageviews per month.  Kim is now going full-time into blogging.

“In some ways I’ve neglected the site for so long,” Kim told the NYT in a phone interview. “Now that I actually have a chance to work on it full time, there’s a good chance it can grow more.”  Blogging just went from a hobby to a full-time professional career.

Even though stepping away from medicine was a tough decision for Kim, he said that MacRumors generates a 6-figure income for himself.  Another reason why Kim decided to work from home is because he has a 14 month old daughter named Penelope.

Kim also runs a website called Touch Arcade.  This blog tracks new games that are released for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Congratulations to Mr. Kim and his daughter.  Hearing about other bloggers succeed keeps us running.

Related Links:
MacRumors.com
NYT