7. Internet business success stories

By Michael Wong

A 17 year old rejects $1.5 million for her MySpace site. Markus earns $10 million a year with an online dating site. A mysterious man sells 100,000 domains for $164 million. These are some of the seven stories of ordinary people achieving extraordinary success with their internet business.

I love reading business success stories, especially when they are about ordinary people who achieve extraordinary internet business success.

It has been said that the internet levels the playing field for everyone. These types of success stories give hope that anyone, irrespective of sex, age, education, or location can become extraordinarily successful online. You don't even have to be particularly talented or skilled, or have any business experience.

Here are the seven web business success stories of seven ordinary people achieving extraordinary success online.

Blogger Wins $300,000 Book Deal 2 Months After Launching Blog

Christian Lander created the funny blog, StuffWhitePeopleLike.com. Just two months after starting the blog, he won a book deal with major publisher, Random House. He received an advance fee of $300,000! Wow!

Stuff White People Like is a blog that takes satirical aim at the interests of North American left-leaning, city-dwelling white folk. The site attracted almost 15 million visitors in a little over two months.

The blog was created in January 2008 by white Canadian, Christian Lander, and co-authored with his Filipino Canadian friend, Myles Valentin, after Valentin teased Lander about his watching the HBO television series The Wire. The blog became popular very quickly, registering over 300,000 daily hits and over 40 million total hits by the end of September 2008.

The Stuff White People Like book was released on July 1, 2008, and has made several bestseller lists.

Source: Why Blog? Reason No. 92: Book Deal - The New York Times, Mar. 30, 2008.

$800,000 iPhone Mortgage Stress Relief

In August 2008, Ethan Nicholas and his wife, Nicole, were having trouble making their mortgage payments. Medical bills from the birth of their younger son were piling up. Then he remembered reading about the guy who had made a quarter-million dollars in a hurry by writing a video game called Trism for the iPhone.

Although Ethan had years of programming experience, he had never programmed for the iPhone. Because he grew up playing shoot-em-up computer games, he decided to write an artillery game. He sketched out some graphics and bought inexpensive stock photos and audio files.

For six weeks, Ethan worked day and night - by day at his job at Sun, and after-hours on his iPhone game. On its first day of release, iShoot which sold for $4.99 earned Ethan $1,000. The second day, $2,000. On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks.

In January, he released a free version of the game with fewer features, hoping to spark sales of the paid version. It worked: iShoot Lite has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and many people have upgraded to the paid version, which now costs $2.99. On its peak day - January 11 - iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies, earning Ethan $35,000.

In the same article, Kostas Eleftheriou and two friends made more than $100,000 in three months with iSteam, a program they wrote in seven days. iSteam fogs up the face of an iPhone like a bathroom mirror, and you swipe a finger across the phone's surface, iSteam's pretend moisture is wiped away with a realistic-sounding squeak. When the phone is tipped on its side, droplets of condensation roll as if pulled by gravity.

Both Ethan and Kostas were inspired by Steve Demeter, who made $250,000 in two months with a game called Trism, which involves aligning rows of brightly colored triangles.

Source: Coder's Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone Gold Rush Is Still On - Wired, Feb. 12, 2009.

Super Affiliate Earns $1.4 Million A Year

Jeremy Palmer, an expert on affiliate marketing, earned gross profits of $837,465 on revenue slightly over $1.4 million.

Jeremy discovered affiliate programs in 2003 after noticing that some of the affiliates for the small financial services company he was working for were earning thousands of dollars in commissions. So he added some affiliate links to a website he owned. He says the commissions he generated encouraged him to build more affiliate sites in other industries.

Within two months Jeremy was making more money from his affiliate sites than he did at his day job. Within six months he was making twice as much, so he decided to quit his day job to focus exclusively on his affiliate business.

Jeremy generated $100,000 from his websites in his first year as an affiliate, and over $1 million in his second year. In 2005, he won Commission Junction's Horizon Award for Innovation. That year, he grossed $1.1 million, and went on to make $1.4 million in 2006.

Jeremy's stats for 2006 make interesting reading:

Revenue: $1.4+ million

PPC Spend: $560,000+

Gross Profit: $837,465

Not bad for a one-man band business!

Source: Should you trust the million-dollar affiliate? - Associate Programs, Sep. 25, 2007.

17 Year Old Girl Rejects $1.5 Million + Car Offer

Ashley Qualls, a mere 17 years old, dropped out of high school, bought a house for $250,000, helped launch artists such as Lily Allen, and rejected offers to buy her young company, including one for $1.5 million and a car (valued up to $100,000)!

Ashley's web site, whateverlife.com, which offers MySpace page layouts for free has raked in more than $1 million in Google AdSense advertising revenue. The business brings in as much as $70,000 a month.

According to Google Analytics, Whateverlife attracts more than 7 million individuals and 60 million page views a month. Quantcast ranked Whateverlife.com a staggering number 349 out of more than 20 million sites. Wow! She's how old?

Source: Girl Power - Fast Company, Dec. 19, 2007.