• The New York Times, Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:15 AM

Cute Overload "is like taking a happy pill," says the tech blog BoingBoing. The Web site featuring snapshots of cute, cuddly little animals has become a surprising success, generating over 800,000 page views per day, according to The New York Times. And why shouldn't it be a success? Cuteness, after all, is the perfect antidote to the pervasive nastiness of bitter bloggers, gossip rags, pornography and spam on the Web.

But Cute Overload is also making real money. While founder Meg Frost won't talk about exactly how much she's made or how many calendars she's sold using content from the site, information from BlogAds, the site's advertising services provider, is more revealing. BlogAds handles advertising for about 1,500 blogs, including PerezHilton.com. The service allows advertisers to view traffic number for each site as well as the cost of various types of ads. According to BlogAds, a "premium" ad on Cute Overload costs about $2,000 per week. The site also offers "standard" ads -- reserved for other small companies in the "cute" business -- for about $500 per week. In all, there are nine standard ads on Cute Overload.

Not bad for a niche site. As BlogAds founder Henry Copeland says, it's all about niches and demographics. On Cute Overload, the audience is overwhelming female and between the ages of 18 and 34. "For these women," he said, "recently graduated from college and sitting in grim corporate America, Cute puts them in touch with their nonwork selves. It's escapism."

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