Trust me, it's VERY easy to have negative cash flow, for any business

Sorry, don't get me wrong, I understand it's easy to burn through cash.

My point is: I'm not sure why Cheezburger thinks it's impressive to set up Wordpress blogs of other people's images without breaking the bank.

You don't think it's impressive? Go do it. I believe these guys are profitable with a headcount of 20-30 people (many of whom are content moderators). They've presumably built an ad-sales machine that works, a moderation machine that works, and build some fairly sophisticated custom software as well as the business analytics software behind it to measure/improve their sites. They've also built a "market testing" machine where they launch speculative blogs and measure their success/viability.

These guys have a GREAT growth curve and healthy margins- rare in the content world. Heck, look at Reddit. Great company, soaring page views, barely profitable.

I'm sure you're similarly unimpressed with Yelp? Threadless? Digg? Reddit?

I don't think you understand my point at all. The pageviews Cheezburger garner ARE impressive. That it is possible to run a business with very low capital costs (based on wordpress blogs) fairly inexpensively (and thus grow or _shrink_ organically) is NOT impressive.

I don't know if they're flouting it as "impressive" so much as "This is a fact that is not true for many other start ups."

>> Your whole business model is based around publishing content on the web you didn't create

You mean like Twitter? Facebook? Youtube?