With Instapaper, I can take a few months off. I can't stop publishing 'The Magazine' for two months and work on something else.

Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people.

I don't even like being quoted in a press release.

With Instapaper, I can take a few months off. I can't stop publishing 'The Magazine' for two months and work on something else.

I don't need every customer. I'm primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?

Apple already had everyone's billing information from iTunes... you could buy things just by typing in your password... That, for the first time, brought very, very easy payment to the modern software world. That, more than anything, is why there is a business for paid apps.

Instapaper does support paywall sites. I have a list of them, that when someone saves something it sends a copy of the page as they are viewing it only to them. If you subscribe to a paid site, you can save the content. I'm not really touching the money.