Most of my posts that make it on Hacker News weren't submitted by me. You can see who is submitting what on https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=simonwillison.net - including a few that I submitted which got nowhere at all.

I accept paid sponsors for my blog (the banner at the top of each page) and newsletter (a clearly marked sponsored message at the top). I try to stay at arms length from those as much as I can - I want it to be very clear that sponsoring me will not result in me writing about a company.