Make money on the web in your part time!
January 17, 2005 11:43 AM   Subscribe

Who says you can't make money on the web? A group of college kids had revenue of over $405,000 from their humor site in December, and now have a story in The New Yorker. I'm in the wrong business.
posted by braun_richard (21 comments total)
 
Nice of you to link to their actual site.
posted by me3dia at 11:52 AM on January 17, 2005


First, revenue <> profit.

Second, this isn't just "making money on the web", since half their revenue came from product sales (albeit sold over the internet).

Third, that $202.5k in revenue from t-shirts might just have $200k in expenses (i.e. cost of shirts, postage, etc.) behind it.

Fourth, sex sells pretty easily. You don't need to be an astronaut to figure that out.

Fifth, $100k apiece in "revenue" (not profit) in Manhattan is not exactly "making money".



posted by RalphSlate at 12:09 PM on January 17, 2005


The 20,000 foam hand thingies cleared $10 in profit apiece. I'm no accountant, but I think that means $200k in profit. From one tacky joke.
posted by mecran01 at 12:15 PM on January 17, 2005


How isn't selling items over the web "making money on the web"?

If you read the article, you'll see how much they are making, and how much they are spending on that NYC loft. They might not be millionaires, but they are making a living off of their web site, which is pretty damn good.
posted by braun_richard at 12:22 PM on January 17, 2005


MoronicFratBoyHumor != CollegeHumor.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:38 PM on January 17, 2005


I'm one of their writers :)
posted by moooshy at 12:47 PM on January 17, 2005


So how much are YOU making, mooshy? And is toplessness manditory?
posted by wendell at 12:55 PM on January 17, 2005


ebaum supposedly makes a shitload of money, too. And mostly what he does is rip off other people's work and put his name on it.

There was a thread on SomethingAfwul recently where someone who claimed to worked on ebaum's site attempted to argue that once you put something on the web, it's "public property". The rationalizations people come up with for stealing the work of others never ceases to amaze.
posted by Potsy at 12:59 PM on January 17, 2005


Nothing wendell. I am doing a biweekly, which I'm hoping will up my numbers from my college paper's humor column (The Daily Pennsylvanian) and hopefully will get a paid gig this summer at a humor mag somewhere. :) I just wrote one about Automatic Defibs for collegehumor, which should be up some point in the next week.
posted by moooshy at 1:03 PM on January 17, 2005


And mostly what he does is rip off other people's work and put his name on it.

There's a lot of that (photoshopped pictures from other sites, etc) on collegehumor as well.
posted by mrbill at 1:04 PM on January 17, 2005


moooshy,

ahhhhh.....a fellow quaker, I'll have to check you out at the DP. Are you writing for 34th street or are you one of the opinion columnists?
posted by slapshot57 at 1:23 PM on January 17, 2005


mrbill: oh yeah, I forgot to mention, about a year ago, collegehumor.com leeched an image from one of my domains. I had to use .htaccess to cut them off. They have no e-manners.
posted by Potsy at 2:08 PM on January 17, 2005


CollegeHumor.com and sites like it make most of their money by STEALING from legitimate sites and content producers. How do I know? Because they rip off pictures from my site and its members constantly. I have no respect whatsoever for these places.

I'm totally in support of content they produce. But ripping off other sites and selling their content? Not cool at all.
posted by glider at 4:06 PM on January 17, 2005


I downloaded a picture from somewhere today that was obviously from one of the photoshop contests on SomethingAwful; it had the SA logo watermarked in the upper-right corner. In a breathtaking example of non-subtlety, CollegeHumor had simply added a border and watermarked it with their logo. Easy money, if you can stomach it. They're hardly alone, though; ebaum and Stile have been doing it for years, and I'm sure there are lots more like that.
posted by RylandDotNet at 4:18 PM on January 17, 2005


Anybody know if The New Yorker is making "money on the web"?

As slate complained when the New Yorker began its site in Feb. 2001, there's still not a good searchable archive (just a couple of choice links backward). But in some of the banner ads there's cleavage worthy of the College Humor crowd, only the ladies aren't doing shots. They look to be on made-for-models downers.
posted by Julie at 4:45 PM on January 17, 2005


I'm just floored by the idea of a group of twenty-something guys being Sex and the City fans.
posted by sourwookie at 4:47 PM on January 17, 2005


new york is not a sitcom!
boobs are not humorous! (are they?)
posted by gorgor_balabala at 6:05 PM on January 17, 2005


Vice is much funnier, and they have tits too.
posted by fungible at 7:15 PM on January 17, 2005


Sarah Jessica Parker is the anti-viagra.

If these guys are making their living off of stolen property, online or off, then they don't deserve to be making the living they're making.
posted by fenriq at 8:49 PM on January 17, 2005


Sarah Jessica Parker is the anti-viagra.

fenriq, I like you more every day.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:39 PM on January 17, 2005


Amen, Sourwookie... That was my first thought. I mean what group of red-blooded, allegedly heterosexual recent college grads sit around watching SATC? Just wrong...
posted by Heminator at 4:16 PM on January 18, 2005


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