It’s a classic example of how a silly Web site surprised the experts and became a serious money-maker. Maybe even an Internet icon.

You may not have actually visited the I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) blog site but I’ll bet you’ve seen its captioned photos of ‘LOLcats’ doing all sorts of improbable things. People love to share and repost them. The site also thrives, content wise, on the contributions of fans who submit their own photos and compose their own captions using ICHC‘s built-in LOLcat maker.

About all that owner Ben Huh of Seattle, WA, has to do is keep the Web site running and collect advertising revenues.

And, though he isn’t saying how much he makes from ICHC, he does admit to having in excess of 4 million visitors daily, across all six of his active time-waster sites, so we can assume he’s not starving.

Huh isn’t sitting on his feline laurels, either. Other sites his company already has in operation include: I Has A Hotdog (LOLdogs), Fail Blog (LOLphotos of things that didn’t quite succeed), Engrish Funny (LOLsigns in English, from foreign countries) and Pundit Kitchen. (LOLpoliticians) There’s also, apparently, another acquisition in the works…

On the development front, Huh is prepping a couple of new sites for launch in the coming year. These, he says, will be video-oriented — positioning him head to head with Web giants such as YouTube.

But his business model remains simple: “The company goal is to make people happy for five minutes a day.”