Each year thousands of blogs are created with the dream they will become famous or make lots of money. Most never achieve either.

There are, however, those few blogs that break out and find an audience. Whether it’s cult-following-gone-pop-culture or culturally relevant, a few become popular and some even are profitable. For example, Awkward Family Photos was started to simply celebrate the awkwardness of family photos. Today is has become so popular it has landed a partnership in a national marketing campaign.

The marketing campaign, Virgin America: Awkward Family Vacation Contest, encourages people who are willing to publicly humiliate themselves to submit their best or worst family vacation photos. The payoff is one of multiple family vacation packages. Photo submissions were due last night at midnight, so unfortunately you’ve missed the boat. But we’ll all be winners when the finalists are posted to the blog tomorrow. Voting begins immediately.

I applaud this concept because Virgin chose to not copy something that already lives, and instead leveraged the existing popularity of Awkward Family Photos through a partnership. I’m pretty sure I could have been a finalist in this contest. My family was great at making a lot of vacation photos look awkward. It might have had something to do with the regrettable late 80’s and early 90’s fashions.

UPDATE: Further proof that “Awkward” has truly arrived: ABC plans to develop a TV series based on the site. Apparently landing a TV deal is the new Holy Grail for wacky web sites and Twitter streams.