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Archive for May, 2009

This is another top list that will surely explode your brains out. A website that could be sold for a lot of money. Lots and lots of money. Check out this list.

30 Websites That Sold For A Lot Of Money

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If you are a blogger this list will surely inspires you a lot.  In a few months, you will earn a million out of your blogs.  Happy blogging!

30 Blog’s That Make A Lot Of Money Online

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Top Internet Entrepreneurs

They are considered the most wealthiest being alive.  Thanks to the internet their career have shifted.  Imagine if internet was not born, what would this guys do for a living.  Anyway, here are the TOP LIST.

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This family turned a childhood game into a multi-million dollar business.

Jera, 34, and Brad Deal, 39

Sticks And Stones, Peoria, Illinois
Projected 2008 sales: $10.5 million
Description: Custom keepsakes made using framed photos

Stick and Stones

Picture perfect: When Jera Deal took her oldest daughter “letter hunting,” it was merely a way for the 15-month-old to learn the alphabet by finding letters in nature and architecture. Four years and two kids later, however, that game had evolved into a full-time business. When they needed a unique and memorable gift for a wedding, Jera and husband Brad framed photos of the letters that spelled the newlyweds’ last name. The keepsake was a hit, and the Deals quickly realized they were on to something.

Show biz: Following the 2005 launch of their website, the Deals got into their first catalog and set out to get their product into as many hands as possible. There was one person, however, who they especially wanted to reach: Oprah Winfrey. After a couple of trips to her show and “a little bit of luck and persistence,” says Brad, they finally managed to reach the icon. “I stood up in front of 300 audience members and [gave] her a keepsake,” he explains. “She opened it and loved it”–so much so that she commissioned one on the spot for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Says Brad, “We were already self-sustaining at that point, but having [Oprah's approval] helped a lot.”

Word bank: Today, Jera and Brad continue to build their letter inventory, brand, reach and sales. They’re inking deals with a third catalog and are working on relationships with Disney and Hallmark. But staying true to their original vision remains a priority. “We don’t ever want to come across as commercialized,” says Jera. “This is a family business [that started] as a hobby with our daughters. We want to maintain that integrity.”

Follow their lead: Even a successful business can benefit from a high-profile endorsement.

Online Exclusive

What is your secret to success?
Brad and Jera: The gut answer is faith. We can’t tell you how many things got answered in our business because we prayed and prayed. But from a business standpoint: building the brand. When you think MP3 player, you think iPod. In our small industry, we are like that. We are the iPod of our specific market.

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs?
Brad and Jera: Seek out people who have done it before or who can help. Don’t be afraid to humble yourself and ask. And don’t be afraid to go straight to the top. Ask for the producer’s name; ask for the editor’s name.

When did you know you’d “made it”?
Brad and Jera: Getting on Oprah’s show as an audience member and giving her a keepsake. When she said, “I have to have [one] for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes,” the audience collectively gasped because they all knew what that was going to do for business. She’s the most recognizable face in the world. We would have been a nameless catalog company without her.

What was the first toy or reward you bought for yourself when you became successful?
Brad and Jera: Honestly, we have not bought a thing for ourselves. We just donate it. We’re house hunting and we’ll get a new car at some point, but we already have nice cars and live in a beautiful home. We already have a blessed life, so it’s a privilege to give back to the community. In January, we bought new desks for our daughters’ classrooms at their private school. The desks have been around since 1972; they were falling apart.

Another Internet Millionaire Stories!

Thomas Gorny, 30
iPower
Phoenix
Projected 2006 Sales: More than $40 million
Description: Web hosting and services

Across Countries: Thomas Gorny spent the first 14 years of his life in Poland. A move to Germany found him attending a prestigious business college and running his own PC hardware business. Then, two months before graduation, he dropped out and sold his business for very little money to seize an opportunity to immigrate to America. The risk paid off not once, but twice.

iPower.com

First Time Around: Gorny joined one of the very first web hosting companies in 1996 and earned 20 percent ownership. The company was sold in 1998, and when Gorny left in 1999, he was in the money. “I never thought I’d go back to web hosting,” he says. So he jumped into marketing and real estate, but when the bubble burst in 2001, his stocks dropped and his real estate projects suffered. “I just got involved with the wrong people in business,” says Gorny, who lost everything.

Second Time Around: “Being on an investor visa, I couldn’t even go to work for somebody because I didn’t have a work permit,” Gorny says. After re-examining the hosting market, he realized there was room for a company offering web hosting and site building for nontechnical users. Armed with his American Express card, Gorny willed iPower into existence in late 2001. “I said to myself, ‘If we can acquire 10 customers a day, I’m going to be in heaven.’” The company garnered 60,000 customers in its first year. Now with more than 500,000, iPower recently moved its headquarters from Santa Monica, California, to Phoenix.

No Exit: “One thing I said at the beginning is that I do not have an exit strategy, and I’m holding to [that]. That is a powerful thing,” says Gorny. His business is now the world’s fourth-largest website hosting company, thanks in part to Gorny’s vision of offering feature-rich but also easy-to-use hosting packages. Phoenix may be a long way from Poland, but Gorny has definitely found a place to call his own.

Follow His Lead: Turn adversity into opportunity by revisiting your business strengths and taking cues from your past successes.

Another Internet Millionaire Stories!

Greg Selkoe, 33

Karmaloop, Boston, Massachusetts
Projected 2008 sales: $40 million
Description: Streetwear retailer and online community

Wear it’s at: With brand names like Artful Dodger, Married to the Mob and Naughty Monkey on its roster, Karmaloop is a far cry from your local mall’s cookie-cutter clothing stores. “One of the things that makes Karmaloop unique is that we’re much more than an e-commerce site,” says founder Greg Selkoe. “We’re a community of style.” With his recent video venture KarmaloopTV and upcoming social network Junglelife.com, Selkoe has come a long way since bootstrapping the clothing retailer from his parents’ basement in 1999. “We had to learn on a very tight budget and be very careful about every penny we spent.”

karmaloop.com

Fashion forward: Karmaloop now has a passionate global customer base of more than 2.5 million unique web visitors per month. “We’ve framed it as a movement to help save people from the evil forces of McFashion,” says Selkoe, whose Street Team consists of customers who go out and promote the store. The Kazbah section of the site features a handpicked set of up-and-coming underground designers who help keep Karmaloop on the cutting edge of urban fashion.

Harvard man: Streetwear may seem like an unusual market for someone with an urban planning background and a public policy degree from Harvard, but it’s all led to a deeper cultural understanding that’s helped Selkoe develop his business the same way a city grows from a small town. “Karmaloop is a lifestyle. It’s not just selling clothes,” he says. “Clothing and music and culture are completely linked. It’s all symbiotic.”

Follow his lead: Recruit passionate customers who can help you generate ideas and market your business.

Online Exclusive

What is your secret to success?
Selkoe: Staying positive. A number of things have come up that would make a lot
of people think this company would never succeed. The most important thing is believing in myself, the people I’m working with and the concept.

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs?
Selkoe: Don’t give up. If you have a good idea and you think you can do it, it
takes longer than you think. There were many years when we didn’t make money. If you have a good concept, eventually, it’s going to work out.

When did you know you had “made it”?
Selkoe: You never know that 100 percent. There was never one exact moment when I knew I made it. The thing that kept me going was the tremendous response
from our customers, even when it wasn’t going well in terms of money.

What was the first toy or reward you bought for yourself when you became successful?
Selkoe: Staying in nice hotels is the main thing I started doing, and sometimes flying in first class. For so long, I was taking the bus and staying in flop houses. I would stay in hotels that should have been condemned. Now I’m starting to stay in nicer hotels.

Another Internet Millionaire Stories!

John Vechey, 28; Brian Fiete, 29; and Jason Kapalka, 37
PopCap Games, Seattle
Projected 2007 Sales: More than $20 million
Description: Creator and provider of downloadable games

Level One: When game designer Jason Kapalka first met John Vechey and Brian Fiete in 1997, the two 19-year-olds had just been wooed from Indiana to work at Kapalka’s former employer, a gaming company. “We hit it off really well,” says Kapalka, who was impressed by an online game the two teens had created. “We kept in touch, and around 2000, we were all a little unhappy with our jobs. We thought, ‘Hey, we could start our own company.’”

Beyond the Bust: As it turned out, the years 2000 and 2001 weren’t kind to internet companies. “We didn’t have the best timing, but we survived because we didn’t have many expenses,” says Kapalka. The business’s first low-overhead stomping grounds were in the co-founders’ respective apartments. PopCap adapted to uncertain times by experimenting with direct game downloads from its website. The gamble paid off, and within a couple of years, the company moved to a real office in Seattle. It has since added offices in Chicago; San Francisco; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Dublin, Ireland.

popcap.com

High Score: “We’re just trying to keep a very simple business model: Make games. If people like them, they’ll buy them,” says Kapalka, adding that top sellers include Bejeweled, Bookworm, Chuzzle and Peggle–all games that are easy to learn but hard to master. People certainly love PopCap’s games: Their content generated around $75 million in sales of their content across all platforms and partners in 2006. A lot of that is because the games have more in common with Pac-Man and Tetris than with World of Warcraft. PopCap is helping to engineer a shift from complicated, hard-core gaming to casual gaming for general audiences. Says Kapalka, “We’re moving toward the democratization of video games.” And that’s a winning formula.

Follow Their Lead: No matter how fast your company grows, stay focused on keeping your product quality standards high.  –Amanda C. Kooser
Another Internet Millionaire Stories!

Jacob DeHart, 25, and Jake Nickell, 27
Threadless.com, Chicago
Projected 2007 Sales: $25 million to $30 million
Description: Online T-shirt design company

Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store run by skinnyCorp of Chicago, Illinois, since 2000. Co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started the company with $1,000 in seed money after entering an internet t-shirt design contest^.

Members of the Threadless community submit t-shirt designs online; the designs are then put to a public vote. A small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through an online store. Creators of the winning designs receive a prize of cash and store credit.

Operation

threadless.com

Designers upload their t-shirt designs to the website, where visitors and members of the community score them on a scale of 0 to 5. On average, around 700 designs compete in any given week. Each week, the staff selects about ten designs.Each designer selected receives $2,000 in cash, as well as an additional $500 for every reprint.

On occasion, special contests—known as “Loves Threadless”—run in association with various sponsors. These contests set a theme for designs, with a selection of additional prizes being awarded to the chosen winner; special prizes often relate to the sponsor. The success of this concept led to several spin-off projects by the same company, including ongoing design competitions for t-shirt slogans at OMG Clothing and neckties and wallpaper at Naked and Angry. The competition from OMG Clothing was later integrated into the main website with the introduction of Threadless TypeTees. Multiple other companies have adopted the community model created at Threadless. Nevertheless, in mid-2006, Threadless expanded in a more traditional direction, adding shirts designed by selected artists. These designs, known as Threadless Select designs, are not subject to the voting process.

In the open source community, a Threadless t-shirt or design is considered to be crowd sourced because the designer and the company retain all rights to the design. As the “source” of a design—i.e., its vector graphics file—is not available for download, it cannot be considered “open source”.

Threadless shirts are run in limited batches. When shirts are sold out, customers can request a reprint. However, reprinting occurs only when there is enough demand, and the decision to reprint is ultimately up to company. New shirts are released on Mondays

Another Internet Millionaire Stories!

What NOT to Do

No one said starting a business was easy, but some startup mistakes are avoidable if you know what to watch out for. These 12 common mistakes have bogged down many entrepreneurs — don’t let yourself join their ranks

1. Buying a job rather than a business.

Yes, you’ll have to be involved in the daily operations at the start, but remember that the ultimate goal is to grow your business into much more than just a job where you work hands-on every day. Work on the business, not just in the business.

2. Being a great plumber but having no idea how to run a business that sells plumbing.

Your former jobs are all an apprenticeship to running your own business. Be an apprentice in all areas, not just in the trade or profession of your business. Most important, be sure you’ve paid attention to all aspects of business in your past jobs, no matter what they were.

3. Taking on a business partner.

Most people give away equity upfront to a partner. Yes, there are examples of partnerships that work, but most don’t. Unless you’re absolutely sure about your partnership, hire people to help you out instead.

4. Starting a business from scratch rather than buying an existing operation.

Starting from scratch may seem cheap, but it’ll cost you the most expensive asset you have — time. Buy an undervalued company, and build it up, rather than start from scratch.

5. Thinking the business idea will make the company.

It’s the people who make a business successful, not the product, not the service and not the new invention. Focus on building a great company as much as you do a great product.

6. Thinking too small.

Many startup entrepreneurs want to generate a wage for themselves and nothing more. Instead, aim to build a profit, aim to build something large, and aim to build something great. If you shoot for the stars, you may fail, but at least you’ll make it to the moon.

7. Competing on price and price alone.

This is by far the fastest way to send yourself into bankruptcy. Business is about profit, and having a smaller revenue with a larger profit margin will always beat out winning tons of business but earning almost no profit. Learn marketing and sales so you can get out of the price wars.

8. Trying to cost-cut your way to success.

By saving a wage and doing the work yourself, you forget that nobody’s out there drumming up new business for you. Focus on bringing in the business, not saving a few pennies.

9. Hiring cheap employees.

You get what you pay for. Getting the right people is crucial, so don’t just hire anyone. Wait until you find the right someone.

10. Focusing on only one area of your business.

Business success involves three main areas: sales and marketing, finance and administration, and operations. You have to keep all three working and growing in unison, not just the area you’re good at.

11. Not testing or measuring anything.

Knowing your numbers is vital. In fact, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Measure everything from day one, from how many new prospects you have to how many sales you make.

12. Doing the work once and getting paid once.

The key to success is to do the work once and establish a long-term, income-generating relationship. Learn to structure your clients, your business and your income that way, and you’ll build a great business.