The branding of niche celebrations has been a clever business strategy. The OnlySimchas website began with only a small number of American postings and simcha categories; it now features an international audience with sixteen categories including Bris (circumcision), Graduations, Upsherins (a Jewish tradition when three year old boys get their first haircut), Bar Mitzvahs, and Torah Dedications among other more traditional categories that readers can easily access to satisfy their Jewish geography cravings.

The OnlySimchas site is a busy, colorful page with flashing advertisements and constantly updated pictures of some of the latest featured postings. After registering for free, anyone can upload announcements and post pictures. And while some people simply post one or two pictures, others prefer to share, what seems to be, a moment-by-moment catalog of their simcha.

The success of the website is indicated by its large volume of hits as well as by its advertisements, which range the spectrum of anything Jewish. According to the statistics featured on the site, OnlySimchas gets approximately four million page-views per week. It has over 136,000 users and almost 220,000 photos uploaded to its website.

Since the website is geared to a Jewish constituency, it is a natural advertising magnet for other brands and companies targeting Jewish consumers. Photographers are born advertisers for this site that features announcements of parties and weddings. So too are Jewish vacations and tour programs; apparel companies that sell modestly-designed clothes for a more modestly-dressing population segment; kosher wedding halls; bridal wear companies; sellers of traditional Jewish garb; and even Jewish charity organizations encouraging those more fortunate to help those less so.

Like many sites, visitors can stage fake simchas or impersonate others. Recently, for example, Observer owner Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump appeared on the main page. Their engagement announcement and picture were subsequently removed, probably because it was unauthorized.

The website, which continues to expand, boasts a Classifieds section, a Business Directory listing all advertisers, and as of 2004, a link to its new venture, FutureSimchas.com, a matchmaking site.

The brilliance of the OnlySimchas brand is that it captures the basic human desire to communicate to family, friends, even strangers, the happiest and proudest moments in life, and has focused on a population that is relatively close-knit and family oriented. Furthermore, it recognizes and capitalizes on the human craving to be in the know and to be a part of, no matter how remotely, a community. This explains OnlySimchas’ never-ending stream of participants and its notable achievement of returning viewers to the site, time and time again.

And so, mazal tov to you OnlySimchas!