LAS VEGAS — It's almost 3 a.m. at the Tao nightclub on the Strip, and the anthem for the night is still blaring: "Party like a rock, party like a rockstar ... "

Photographer Hew Burney, high on energy drinks, cuts through the dancing crowd with the practiced stealth of a running back spotting holes in a defensive line. He snaps pictures of cleavage-baring women who smooch for the camera and tilt half-full bottles of pricey champagne to their lips.

He flits to the next group, but not before tossing out a handful of business cards reading, "That picture you don't remember taking last night. ... http://Spyonvegas.com." By the time Burney calls it quits at 4:30 a.m., he's shot 1,400 pictures that will be posted online before most revelers have slept off their hangovers.

The Web site may masquerade as a Girls Gone Wild knockoff, but it's a sophisticated marketing machine logging 12 million page views a month, with banner ads from every hot spot in town. It's the brainchild of Ryan Doherty, 31, and Justin Weniger, 26, who have launched five different businesses in four years, all tethered to the exploding Vegas night life scene. Their enterprise, Wendoh Media, also operates a printing business, publishes two magazines and sells VIP passes to nightclubs.

Doherty and Weniger are the new breed of Vegas entrepreneur, finding success in Sin City without ever stepping foot in a casino. Over the past few years, nightclubs on and near the Strip have taken on a life of their own, mushrooming from a handful to about 30 today, with more in the pipeline. The clubs are considered as vital as a poker room, with casinos carving out thousands of square feet for them and erecting huge digital billboard marquees.

The Venetian's Tao restaurant and nightclub raked in more cash than any other restaurant in the country in 2006 with $55 million in sales — nearly half of that in alcohol — so it's no surprise that Vegas' robust night life is producing the city's next generation of moguls.

So much cash is flowing into these venues that even the management companies are branching out. The Light Group, the mastermind behind the Light nightclub at the Bellagio and Jet at the Mirage, is planning three new restaurants, a loft project off-Strip and the Harmon Hotel & Residences at MGM Mirage's $7 billion CityCenter.

The money is also helping buy respect, said Bryan Bass, who teaches nightclub management at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "There's definitely a younger generation that's starting to have a larger impact on Las Vegas," he said.

The Light Group managing partner Andy Masi, 37, agreed, noting that the Bellagio once nixed his company's idea for a nightclub. Today, the Bellagio's parent, MGM Mirage, "has given us a hotel to operate and market and run. They no longer think of us as the nightclub kids."

There are no official measures of the economic impact of the clubs. But industry insiders say they are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, driving people into casinos and hotels, and creating scores of new jobs — from bartenders and bouncers directly employed by the clubs to publicists and club photographers such as Burney who feed off the frenzy, and feed back into it.

Consider the success of Pure Management Group. In five years, revenue for the company — which manages the Pure club at Caesars Palace, Social House and Tangerine at TI and Coyote Ugly at New York New York — has jumped from $25 million to "in excess" of $120 million, said managing partner Steve Davidovici.

"Before, night clubs were something that was scary — and the people running them were a little scary," Davidovici said. "But this is a big business with big businesses behind them and real money being generated."

Before long, UNLV's Bass said, "We'll definitely see a night club making $100 million in gross revenue and that's pretty amazing."

Chad Pallas, director of special events at the Hard Rock Hotel, said, "Las Vegas is probably at the level of world-class nightclubs, rivaling New York, Miami, anywhere in the country, and it has a lot to do with the money generated."

Doherty said: "The guy that makes all the money in the gold rush is the guy that sells all the shovels. There's more and more nightclubs growing, and we stay in the middle of all of them."