He also has no shareholders except himself. So the only person he has to please is himself, and if he is wrong, the only person who suffers is himself (and, I suppose, his family).
This very direct, very personal connection to the web business doesn't exist in most other sites.
He also has no ambitions towards being a billionaire, he just wants to make enough money to sustain a mostly upper middle class lifestyle and keep his business going.
I think a lot of online publications could be modestly sized businesses with a very respectable annual revenue range in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, but they erode their own brand value chasing tantalizingly higher numbers that SEEM in reach but actually aren’t.
This very direct, very personal connection to the web business doesn't exist in most other sites.