stealing content IS PROFITABLE
 

eBaumsworld.com goes from prank to profit

Amy Wu
Staff writer

(February 5, 2005) ? Eric Bauman, unlikely CEO and Internet celebrity, sat in his company's boardroom looking nervous. Until recently, the 25-year-old has stayed elusive to his thousands of loyalists, and he likes it that way.

Dressed down in faded gray pants and a worn sweater, he balks at having his picture taken.

"He's kind of shy," says Neil Bauman, 54, his father and chief financial officer of Eric's company, Ebaum's World Inc.

The native Rochesterian's claim to fame is his Web site www.ebaumsworld.com, one of the Internet's largest entertainment Web sites. The site that Bauman started as a prank while at Webster High School has become a must-read for the college and cubicle crowd.

The site sees 1 million hits a day, has more than 50,000 registered members and is ranked as one of the top 500 sites by Alexa, a company that tracks Web sites. Its loyalists are mostly 18- to 34-year-old males in the United States.

"Luck and timing"

Its founder is also an unlikely success story. Until the company was incorporated in 2002, Bauman was a former mediocre student at what was then Webster High School who dropped out of Monroe Community College to pursue what he thought was just a hobby. "It's mind blowing, I think a lot of it was luck and timing," said Neil Bauman, who also works as a financial adviser at the Polisseni Agency and tends to jump in and speak for his son.

Ebaumsworld.com is a one-stop shop to all kinds of entertainment. The content can be edgy and racy, and the site is packed with links to everything from prank calls to office humor from offbeat videos to office pranks that Bauman already has tested. Then there are the pictures of half-naked women.

One of the most popular features is the soundboard with audio clips from celebrities such as Dr. Phil and Judge Judy. The content is pulled from various sources, or is sometimes original content submitted to Bauman.

At times, it has gotten Bauman in hot water. Howard Stern has mentioned the site on his show. In 2002, Viacom threatened to sue Bauman for using content from its clients, such as Paramount.

According to the father and son team, the site has been profitable for two years to date, making its money mostly from advertising by clients such as Google AdSense and Fastclick.

Neil Bauman says he encouraged his son to launch it as a business in 2002. "I took a more active role when I realized he had something here more substantial," he says.

Soon after, Eric hired his father as CFO, his girlfriend Kelli Rinaudo, 24, as a project manager, and his high school friend Jason Martorana, 24, as operations manager. The company plans on adding three more people to its current staff of 13.

The site's success has made Eric Bauman a multimillionaire, allowing him to buy a $150,000 house and an $850,000 office building in Brighton.

Man behind the site

In high school Eric Bauman was known for pulling pranks on teachers. "He was voted class clown so that sums it up," laughs Martorana. "He was quite a character. Teachers despised him because of the antics he pulled, like setting off stink bombs and bringing in universal remote controls and turning on TVs in the middle of class."

But it planted the seeds for Bauman's business success.

In Bauman's junior year he created a Web site as a spoof. Before long it was immensely popular with his classmates, and word of mouth gave the site a boost.

Bauman enrolled in Monroe Community College declaring undeclared as a major. A video game addict since boyhood, he preferred to spend his time on his passion: running eBaumsworld.com. "He never came out of his room, he never graduated from college, he didn't date girls, and his mother and I were quite worried about him," Bauman says. "... But this kid is a nerd beyond belief, he took to it (computers) like a proverbial duck to water."

The dot-com world moves quickly, and the Baumans are scrambling to capitalize on the site's popularity. Bauman's biggest challenge is growing the company while not selling out and losing his loyalists.

"To balance it, it's tough," says Eric, who is poker-faced and quiet. "To get the commercial appeal and growth you have to sacrifice some of the risky material and do away with some of the content," which he doesn't want to do.

President and CFO agree that diversifying the content is one way to walk the fine line. Over the next several weeks the company will launch two additional sites: sports and news. The sports site is a business venture with the heavyweight boxer Hasim "The Rock" Rahman, and will have exclusive one-on-one interviews with sports stars. The Buffalo Bills also approached Bauman to discuss possible partnerships.

With eBaumsworld.com's growing popularity, Eric Bauman may need to get used to the spotlight.

Already he has been approached by venture capitalists, but he doesn't want to take any of their money, preferring to keep complete control of his business.

"My son has said, 'I don't want to sell it, I want to see how far we can take this.' He said, 'Heck, maybe we could be the next Google or Yahoo!' but he's made a complete believer out of me. My comment was those kids (founders of Google and Yahoo!) were 28 or 29 years old. Eric is 25 now, so maybe the next two or three years he will be that big," Neil Bauman says, as his son emerges from silence.

"So I got a few years. I'm going to have fun for a few years and then we'll go public," Eric says.

hmmm..gonna go start ripping off people right now.

me too

step1: post links to movies from other websites
step2: put adwords on my site
step3: PROFIT

man we're about to be so rich

LOL sounds like a solid biz plan and then in 5 years we can go public.

Damn. I didnt know ebaumsworld made that kind of cash

Eric was not the first to do this... However he learned well from the people who did it before him...

I for one am glad to see Eric finally profiting. His road was long and hard.

i remember talking with eric, back when i was the senior engineer at prohosters, very cool guy. at that time the site was doing ~20mbit great guy :)

his road wasnt long and hard..

he was a shitty highschool student and a community college dropout - he stole movies from other sites and uploaded them to his server, now he has millions of dollars

yeah.. real tough

Sounds like you know him well ...

Like Spudstr I have known Eric for quite a long time and know of his trials and tribulations.

I had no idea he was from my neck of the woods. Interesting.

I surprises he hasn't been legally threatened more that he has. At least he's hosting most of the content and not hotlinking it.

God is great!

Wow, what a great success story!! I want to be like him.

how much do you think that site makes daily off ads?

lots, they install scumware via fastclick

PLAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Go fusker... and you can add ads asap to your site.. sad but true.

I guess that answers the question I had a few days ago:

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=426888

There are lots of sites like Ebaums now. It's like the mainstream version of the TGP, everybody's got one. It'll be interesting to see who stays ahead in that arena and how they do it.

You read the SA forums?

I wrote that "journalist" a letter.

He's posted here to GFY under a few different names in the past. I recall him once saying he wouldn't sell his site for $1million, and then GFY called him out for being so clueless. Guess we know who was clueless now....

well.. how much of his content is actually stolen now?

i mean, the thread way back about stile is probably even worse than his.

but eh, money is money.

indeed I mean its impressive what he achived and the popularity of the site...but saying it was "hard work, original, legal,etc.." pfff *g* :helpme