Why so big difference in revenue?

Theoatmeal with 5mil monthly uvs is making $500k a year. While theChive with 20mil monthly uvs is making $50mil a year, on the other side Reddit with 70mil monthly uvs is barely making any money. If theoatmeal with 5mil uvs is making $500k then with 20mil uvs it would make $2million yearly while the chive $50mil? All three websites are similar to its content + most of Reddit images are hosted on imgur. Why is so big difference in revenue?

http://www.incomediary.com/blogger-p...uilt-500k-blog
http://www.businessweek.com/articles...nial-marketing
http://www.businessinsider.com/reddi...the-red-2013-7

you've basically answered your own question Revenue is the total sales a company has and profit is what's left over after expenses.

Here is a simple example:

Revenue $1,000 (sales)
Costs $900 (salaries, advertising, etc)
Profit = $100

There is a big difference between the profit and revenue because companies have a lot of expenses to pay. They have to pay for the goods they sell, employees, office space, etc.

Everyone knows that Reddit users wear tinfoil hats and use AdBlock

I understand what revenue is And i didnt compare imgur because of that. Imgur is image hosting website and i know their server costs are really big. Thats why i compared these 3 similar picture websites.
I cant understand why if theoatmeal had same traffic as thechive would have $2mil annual revenue while thechive $50m. Thats not small difference.

zenlagor said:

Everyone knows that Reddit users wear tinfoil hats and use AdBlock

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This. Reddit is so hard to monetize with banners.

lord1027 said:

This. Reddit is so hard to monetize with banners.

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Disagree, slightly.

I've got a lot of experience with reddit marketing (but not through advertising/low cost CPM type revenue).

What I've found is that the real money is in targeting the right people and selling them a high dollar product.

Not sure if that makes sense -- but its easier to sell electronic cigs to people from the /r/electronic_cig subreddit (and make $5/UV of reddit traffic or something) than just getting general traffic to a blog/content website and trying to monetize through adsense.

Does that make sense? I'd agree that stumbleupon traffic is hard to monetize for the same reason -- but at least with reddit you can niche down very hard.

The chives revenue is so huge because of the chivery. They sell physical goods (mostly t-shirts ) so they control their cost and have pretty good markup. Plus they sell a ton of it. So it is not just based off of advertising if that is what your assuming. I am not familiar with the other site but the difference is probably based on what is being sold.

Ray Rolls said:

The chives revenue is so huge because of the chivery. They sell physical goods (mostly t-shirts ) so they control their cost and have pretty good markup. Plus they sell a ton of it. So it is not just based off of advertising if that is what your assuming. I am not familiar with the other site but the difference is probably based on what is being sold.

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Yes but theoatmeal also sells products. "Today, about 75% of The Oatmeal's profit comes from merchandise: informational wall posters, greeting cards, calendars, clothing, coffee cups, signed prints, stickers, magnets, badges." Both theoatmeal and thechive are picture based + thechive has videos that are not hosted on youtube, and i believe theoatmeal pictures are less sized becase he drews them. Inclouding all this, i still cant understand how if theoatmeal and thechive had same traffic theoatmeal would earn $2mil annualy while thechive $50mil. Maybe theChive is lying. But i highly doubt becase they bought $4 building for their headquarters.

Great work. Things to look like reddit