Interesting analysis. My website, http://officesnapshots.com, is essentially the same idea ("information DJ") but in a much different vertical - company offices.
Once you start collecting information in blog format, the difficult thing to do is to do anything interesting with it other than have it in date-based archives. The Christmas Cookies site is much more interesting in that way.
For anyone looking to start a blog with this sort of model, I've found it important to actually go and sell your site to advertisers as opposed to sitting back and waiting for them to come to you and buy.