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WEB SITE MAKES PROFIT
CEO Credits Excess of Revenues Over Expenses |
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For immediate release: Monday July 9, 2001 The content-based Web site kausfiles.com announced today that it would make a profit in the "solid three figures" for the first half of 2001. "I will have expenses of $2,346, and I've already received income of $2,664.60, so unless I go crazy and buy a table or something, we're in the black," said the CEO of kausfiles.com, Mickey Kaus. He added that these calculations, which show a profit of $318.60, are conservative, because "they assume I'm paying my bills." Kausfiles.com's chief financial officer, Mickey Kaus, said, "$318.60 may not seem like a lot. But that's $318.60 The New Yorker didn't make this year. It's more profit than The New Republic, The Weekly Standard and The Nation combined!" Kaus analyzed the competitive environment for content sites: "Pseudo.com, dead. Suck, dark. Feed, on ice. Inside, sold. Salon, dying. Kausfiles, profitable." "Nyah, nyah," he added Kausfiles.com features commentary and reporting written by a staff that includes Mickey Kaus. "We've assembled a tightly-knit team, and everyone put aside their differences and pulled together," said Kaus. "We live the brand around here, " he responded when asked for the secrets of the venture's success. "We interrogate the brand. We subtly disorient the brand. We buy the brand dinner. And every now and then we take the brand out back and teach it a thing or two, if you know what I mean." Kausfiles.com's expenses for the six-month period include $600 for a server, $1,416 for LEXIS-NEXIS services, $150 for design work, and approximately $180 for phone bills. Revenues include $1,000 from one advertiser, Steven Brill's Contentville, plus $1,610.69 in payments from the Amazon Honors System, which allows readers to contribute to support the site. They also include $53.91 in commissions from Amazon.com for books and other items sold by readers who access Amazon from the kausfiles.com site. Kausfiles.com attracts more than 100,000 visits from about 30,000 unique visitors a month with an editorial mix centering on "sex, cars, and welfare reform," although there hasn't been much sex since the end of President Clinton's term in office. The site formerly also featured frequent criticism of Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker, but the firm's strategic director, Mickey Kaus, says that will probably change. "We're shifting from a Toobin-based marketing strategy to one that is more Kurtz-based," he explained to analysts, referring to Washington Post and CNN media-critic Howard Kurtz, whom kausfiles has attacked repeatedly. Kurtz should provide "a more solid basis for future growth," he argued, because "he writes more." Kaus added that he is in the market for a "cheap, used Aeron chair."
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