I went to go hear Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network speak at Seattle Public Library on Saturday April 23. This is the startup guy behind the LOLcat site, Fail Blog, Graph Jam, Engrish Funny, and other funny content sites. He lives in Seattle.
Everyone entering the lecture was offered free cheeseburgers from Dick’s. He was a terrific speaker. He did a slideshow packed with pictures and his presentation was totally complimentary to the slides, and not just a rehash of them. He was done lecturing in 20 minutes, which is exactly what I want from most speakers. After he was done talking, he asked for questions and anyone who asked a question got a stuffed Happy Cat. During his lecture, he said that his company employs 40 people. My guess at average salary is $50k so they must be paying out 2 million a year. My question was how his site network creates that kind of livelihood for that many people. His answer was advertising, t-shirts, and books.
I already expected him to say that because I had read that answer in lots of places before, but it felt good to hear it from him. He compared his business model to that of Twitter, Facebook, and Google, saying that all the sites are just content providers like any other media company. The only difference is that their content is user-generated. Again, I knew this, but it just seemed more real to hear it than read it.