User: rebeccafrankel

What Philip spends his Amazon money on.

On: Review:Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing

He actually explains what he does with the money
in
Chapter 2: So You Want to Join the World's
Grubbiest Club: Internet Entrepreneurs of his book:

In 1996, I set up links from my site to Amazon and Computer Literacy,
asking them to write referral fee checks payable to "Angell Memorial
Animal Hospital" (see
http://photo.net/photo/donationlist.html)

He explains why he chose Angell on his
gift shop page:
(George is the first Samoyed dog he owned; Alex, the coauthor of the book,
is the second).

I established a memorial fund there after George died.
Donations ensure that pets owned by poor people get proper treatment
and provide funding for important veterinary research.

Although two of my dogs have died in Intensive Care at Angell, I feel
that it is the best run health care organization I've seen.
Coordination among specialists is much tighter than in a hospital for
humans and no money is spent on fancy advertising campaigns,
ego-boosting interior decoration, or finding clever new ways to get
more Medicare funds.

Did you really think he would keep the money for himself to
spend on lenses? This weekend, at a barbeque he gave
for the finalists for
the ArsDigita Prize, one of the finalists asked him why he
gave the Amazon money away to charity. He said, basically, that it was dumb
to run an extremely expensive site and keep the measly proceeds to
himself. If you are going to be greedy, he said, you need to be
effectively greedy. To try to be greedy and fail miserably
at it just makes you look like a loser.

That's Philip for you.