So the guy in the front of the room is getting a laugh a minute. He’s wearing over-the-top white-rimmed glasses. You might guess he’s on the low side of 40, a little stockier than thin … nothing too remarkable. Unassuming, self-effacing. Ben Huh is talking about how he makes a living—posting goofy photos of cats online accompanied by silly captions. Scoff if you like, but Ben is amazingly successful on any number of fronts. (He was recently in Austin, Texas, in conjunction with the SXSW Interactive conference.)

His company operates some 45 Web sites that garner about 15 million visitors a month. (Yeah, it all started with goofy cat photos.) Advertisers will pay a lot for those eyes, and even a low conversion rate can yield big merchandise sales. Ben is best known for the online phenomenon, I can has cheez burger, which he has turned into an online publishing empire. Check out all the sites. (Analytics show most people do it at work.)

So what do silly photos and what some call moronic captions have to do with reputation management or brand development? Much.

His businesses have a well-defined focus: “Our mission is to make people happy for five minutes a day.”

He stresses listening to key audiences: “Understand what they want. Get out of their way. Give them what they want at the highest quality possible.” (Some 13,000 submissions per day yield the 100 that are posted.)

The ‘I can has…’ empire is fanatical about consistency, starting their daily publishing schedule when East-Coasters arrive at work: “You can come here every day and find something interesting and reliable.”

Ben Huh says they have had their share of failures. Not every site idea generates traffic. For those that do, long-term success has at least one thing in common with those who market even high-priced discretionary goods or who manage corporate reputations: “Make it about the audience.”