“The only way to make money online is by selling porn or tshirts.”
–Loose paraphrase of something I heard on the web.

Four out of the seven paid sponsorships on Boing Boing are for tshirt companies, zeroboutique.com (high art tees), Spreadshirt (custom tees), Defunker (ironic art tees), Busted Tees (punny tees). Which begs the question: Neighborhoodies (lo-fi custom tees) and American Apparel (sweatshop-free tees), where art thou? And if you reload you’ll also see diesel sweeties (self-described indie tees) appear at the top.

Who knew there were so many tshirt niches all of a sudden? I’m going to have nightmares filled with Manhattan sweatlofts crowded with dozens of High Life drinking, liberal arts educated twentysomethings slaving over screen printers late into the night. Is this Web 2.0?

Google does its best to provide context relevant ads, wringing the profits out of the long tail, of which I assume the Happy Mutants LLC only sees drips and drops. Also in blue is an ad for a recent article in Wired, which probably only benefits Wired’s bottom line by edging up their own ad impressions and click-throughs. Oh, and there’s also an ad for that little DIY magazine that could produced by the company I work for.

The ads in purple on the left are all self-promotions, which don’t really count since they don’t cost nobody nothing.