Pink Net Money

Getting Rich is Simpler Than You Think

2010-12-03T17:37:00.000+08:00

Here is the single most important thing you will ever hear about investing: Getting rich is simple.

Not easy, but simple.

And here is the second most important thing you will ever hear about investing: You have no excuse not to do it.

Only three ingredients are needed: income, discipline and time. Chances are, you already have two of them, income and time. All you need to do is add the third, discipline. And armed with the following knowledge, that key third ingredient may be a lot easier to find.

Here's how it works: Say you start with nothing, invest $500 (of your income) a month (a healthy discipline), and let your money ride (over time) in diversified investments. Long term, the stock market returns at least 10% annually. Assuming a 10% return, you'd have $102,000 after 10 years, $380,000 after 20 years, and $1.1 million in 30 years.

Here's a similar scenario: If you start with a nut of $50,000 and add only $250 per month, you'd have $180,000, $516.000 and $1.4 million after 10, 20, and 30 years, respectively. All this happens through the power of regular investing and a simple-but-powerful concept called compounding.

Compounding

What is compounding?

Compounding is the reinvestment of the interest you receive from the money you set aside. For example, if you invest $1,000 and earn 10% interest on your principal at the end of each year, you'll get in $100 interest at the end of the first year. If you reinvest that interest, the second year you would start with $1,100, and thus would earn $110 interest. If you stay with it, you'd more than double your money every eight years.

"Compounding," Albert Einstein said, "is mankind's greatest invention because it allows for the reliable, systematic accumulation of wealth." Einstein was a smart man. But you hardly have to be a genius to make this concept work for you.

The real magic of investing comes when you combine the surprising power of compounding with continuous and regular investments -- in other words, discipline.

The best way to make these continuous investments happen is by setting up an account with a broker or mutual fund that automatically deducts a fixed amount from your bank account every month. "Automatic" is the operative word here. Trust me, if you don't set it up that way, it won't happen. Instead, you'll end up pouring money in when the market is soaring and skipping payments when it's heading down. Eventually you'll get discouraged and give up.

Dollar-cost averaging

The process of continuously investing a fixed dollar amount is called dollar-cost averaging -- a term that sounds much more technical than it is. Through dollar-cost averaging, you'll end up buying more shares when a stock or fund is down, and fewer when it's up. For instance, say you're investing $500 monthly in a stock trading initially at $50 per share; so the first time, you buy 10 shares. If the next month the stock moves up to $62.50 your regular purchase will net you only eight shares. However, if the stock drops to $41.67, you'll get 12 shares (not including any transaction fees).

It's easy to set up regular-investment mechanisms, thus harnessing the power of dollar-cost averaging. Mutual funds are the traditional way. But there are other outlets, as well, that allow you to apply the strategy with individual stocks or exchange-traded funds, which are baskets of stocks that identically track standard market indexes, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU).

Risk

Sure, investing in the stock market has risk. There's always the chance the market will go nowhere for the next 20 or 30 years and you'll end up no better than where you started. But there's risk in everything, even CDs.

With CDs, your original investment isn't in danger. Most CDs are insured, and the federal government will step in and make you whole, even if your bank goes belly up.

But a problem crops up when something more sinister surfaces: inflation. At this writing, inflation, running at around 2%, is considered relatively benign. But is it?

Let's do some math. Your real return is the interest you receive less the inflation rate. If your CD is paying 3% and the inflation rate is 2%, you're only making 1% in real terms. If inflation takes off, say to 5%, your CD will probably be paying around 4%. In inflation-adjusted terms, you've lost 1%.

But it can get worse. Inflation hit 14% in the early 1980s. In such times, CDs and similar fixed-income investments don't even come close to the inflation rate, meaning you're losing serious money, in real terms.

By contrast, assets such as real estate and stocks tend to move with prices, and, over time, the stock market has outpaced inflation. For instance, in the 20-year period ending Dec. 31, 2001, the cumulative return of the market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index ($INX), was 1,606%, compared to 88% cumulative inflation over the same period.

What's the point? Yes, there's risk in investing in the market, but the odds are that continuous, regular investing combined with the power of compounding will make you rich.

The odds

If you count yourself a member of the "I want it now" generation, the idea of waiting 20 or 30 years to get rich probably sounds like a dumb idea.

Sure, there are faster ways to get rich. You could win the lottery, or pick the next Intel (INTC, news, msgs) or Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs). But don't quit your day job just yet. Your chances of winning big in the lottery run around 15 million to 1, at best.

Meantime, naturally, you would be sitting pretty if you had had the foresight to plunk significant cash into Intel or Wal-Mart 20 years ago. But consider this: You would have lost money if you'd picked Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, news, msgs) instead of Intel, and you'd be broke if you'd picked Kmart (SHLD, news, msgs) (which ended up merging with Sears Roebuck) instead of Wal-Mart. In both instances, your retirement plans would be history.

Here's the bottom line, like it or not: The fate of your retirement, your comfort in older age, probably lies in your commitment to the concepts laid out in the paragraphs above. For the vast majority of us, wealth creation is a slow and steady -- and powerful -- process. The tortoise almost always beats the hare.

It's not easy. But it's very, very simple.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 1

2010-03-27T09:51:00.000+08:00

Ingvar Kamprad
Net worth: $31 billion

World’s richest retailer and founder of furniture store Ikea.

Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ball-point pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a reward for succeeding in his studies. He used this money to establish what has grown into IKEA.

The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name (Ingvar Kamprad) plus those of Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born; and the nearby village Agunnaryd.

Kamprad has admitted that his dyslexia played a large part in the inner workings of the company. For example, the Swedish-sounding names of the furniture sold by IKEA were originally chosen by Kamprad because he had difficulty remembering numeral stock-keeping units.

Reputed to be quite frugal: flies economy class, frequents inexpensive restaurants, furnishes his home with Ikea ware.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 2

2010-03-27T09:50:00.002+08:00

Li Ka-shing
Net worth: $26.5 billion

Li fled turbulent China in 1940 and resettled in Hong Kong. Li’s father died in Hong Kong.

Shouldering the responsibility of looking after the livelihood of the family, Li was forced to leave school before the age of 15 and found a job in a plastics trading company where he labored 16 hours a day.

By 1950, his hard work, prudence and his pursuit of excellence had enabled him to start his own company, Cheung Kong Industries. From manufacturing plastics, Li led and developed his company into a leading real estate investment company in Hong Kong that was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1972.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 3

2010-03-27T09:50:00.001+08:00

Roman Abramovich
Net worth: $23.5 billion

Orphaned at age 4, Abramovich was raised by his uncle and grandmother. He dropped out of college and eventually made a fortune after taking over Russian oil giant Sibneft, which he later sold.

Roman, was gifted with a talent for business and being in the right place at the right time as he started his career as an entrepreneur just as Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms permitted the opening of small private businesses.

He began his business career selling plastic ducks from a grim Moscow apartment but, within a few years, Abramovich’s vast wealth spread from oil conglomerates to pig farms, and secured his place within Yeltsin’s inner circle. However, even today, his task force of bodyguards and armoured Mercedes testify to the high-risk nature of capitalism in post-Soviet Russia.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 4

2010-03-27T09:49:00.001+08:00

Sheldon Adelson
Net worth: $26 billion

The son of a Boston cabdriver, he borrowed $200 from an uncle to sell newspapers at age 12. Later, he dropped out of college to become a court reporter. Now a casino and hotel magnate, Adelson took his Las Vegas Sands public in December 2004.

He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was twelve. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business with two friends. He went to college at City College of New York but did not complete a degree there.

The basis for Adelson’s wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. It was the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business centricity through the exhibition industry.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 5

2010-03-27T09:48:00.001+08:00

Amancio Ortega
Net worth: $20.2 billion

Son of a railway worker Ortega apparently got started as a clerk in a shirt store. With $25 and help from his then wife Rosalia Mera, now also a billionaire, he began making gowns in his living room.

In 1975 he opened the first store in what would grow into the enormously popular chain of fashion stores called Zara.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 6

2010-03-27T09:47:00.000+08:00

Kirk Kerkorian
Net worth: $16 billion

Son of Armenian immigrants, he dropped out of school in the eighth grade and took up boxing.

Kirk Kerkorian was born on June 6, 1917 in Fresno, California, to Armenian immigrant parents. Dropping out of school in 8th grade, he became a fairly skilled amateur boxer under the tutelage of his older brother, fighting under the name â€œRifle Right Kerkorianâ€ to win the Pacific amateur welterweight champion.

After the war, having saved most of his wages, Kerkorian spent $5,000 on a Cessna. He worked as a general aviation pilot, and made his first visit to Las Vegas in 1944. After spending much time in Las Vegas during the 1940s, Kerkorian quit gambling and in 1947 paid $60,000 for Trans International Airlines, which was a small air-charter service which flew gamblers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

He then bid on some war surplus bombers, using money on loan from the Seagrams family. Gasoline, and especially airplane fuel, was in short supply at the time, so he sold the fuel from the planesâ€™ tanks, paid off his loan – and still had the airplanes. He operated the airline until 1968 when he sold it for $104 million to the Transamerica Corporation.

Later, he made billions buying and selling movie studio MGM. Today his MGM Mirage owns more than half the hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 7

2010-03-27T09:46:00.000+08:00

Oprah Winfrey
Net worth: $2.5 billion

Born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenaged mother, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood, Winfrey was raped at the age of nine, and at fourteen, gave birth to a son who died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.

Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Because of the amount of revenue the show generated, Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company. By 1994 the show’s ratings were still thriving and Winfrey negotiated a contract that earned her nine figures a year.

Considered the richest woman in entertainment

by the early 1990s, at age 41 Winfrey’s wealth crossed another milestone when with a net worth of $340 million, she replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. Although blacks are 12% of the U.S. population, Winfrey has remained the only black person wealthy enough to rank among America’s 400 richest people nearly every year since 1995.

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 8

2010-03-27T09:45:00.000+08:00

Micky Jagtiani
Net worth: $2.5 billion

Jagtiani flunked out of accounting school in London and took up driving taxis and cleaning hotel rooms to pay the bills and support a bottle of whiskey a day habit. He then lost his entire family to illness in the span of one year.

Just 21 and alone in Bahrain with $6,000 of his and his familyâ€™s savings, he took over the retail space his brother had leased before dying of cancer and started selling baby products. Chain is now one of the most profitable retail groups in the Middle East.

Thirty years after he landed up in Bahrain the Dubai-based CEO of Landmark group has built himself one the largest and most profitable retail chains in the Middle East, with more than 280 stores, 6,000 employees and an estimated $650 million in revenues

Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 9

2010-03-27T09:44:00.000+08:00

Richard Desmond
Net worth: $2 billion

After his parents divorced, Desmond lived with his mother in a garage apartment. Quit school at age 14 to become a drummer and worked in a coat-check room to help pay the bills.

His first job was for Thomson Newspapers, working in classified advertisements. He moved on to another company and by the age of 21 he owned two record shops. He acquired an interest in publishing and in 1974 published a magazine called International Musician and Recording World.

Started his first magazine at age 22 and now owns dozens of titles, including celebrity rag OK!.

Rags to Riches Billionaires Story # 10

2010-03-27T09:43:00.000+08:00

J.K. Rowling
Net worth: $1 billion

British writer and author of the Harry Potter fantasy series.

Rowling moved to Portugal after the death of her mother from multiple sclerosis. She returned to the U.K. a single mother and lived on welfare while finishing her first Harry Potter story. Now one of the worldâ€™s most successful authors, she published the seventh and final installment of the boy wizard series last July.

She progressed from living on welfare to multi-millionaire status within five years.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Facebook

2010-03-26T16:51:00.002+08:00

Website: Facebook
Founder: Mark Zuckerberg
Place started the business: At his Harvard Dorm Room

The birth of Facebook is related to Zuckerberg’s appetite for hacking.
He got into limelight when he refused $1 billion offer from Yahoo. Later on he settled with $240 million dollar deal, giving Microsoft 1.6% stake in Facebook raising the valuation to $15 billion.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Google

2010-03-26T16:49:00.001+08:00

Website: Google
Founder: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Place started the business: In a garage

Larry and Sergey started on a name BackRub. But Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google — a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Runescape

2010-03-26T16:39:00.002+08:00

Website: Runescape
Founder: Andrew Gower
Place started the business: From a bedroom in his parents’ house in Nottingham.

He has involved in coding for games since his childhood. He had a penchant for dungeon gaming. He initially started RunEscape as a hobby, and later monetized his website and turned out to be a successful business venture.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: PopCap Games

2010-03-26T16:34:00.002+08:00

Website: PopCap Games
Founders: John Vechey, along with Brien Fiete and Jason Kapalka
Place started the business: In his office

John Vechey, along with Brien Fiete and Jason Kapalka founded Popcap games in the year 2000. They earlier worked with internet gaming sites like flipside and pogo. Their first gaming product was Bejeweled, which became a big hit, and received numerous awards.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Threadless

2010-03-26T16:31:00.001+08:00

Website: Threadless
Founder: Jack Nickell along with Jacob Dehart
Place started the business: From a studio apartment

Jack Nickell along with Jacob Dehart ( both college dropouts ), started threadless when they were still working on their regular job. Both the partners put a modest $500 as their initial investment. Now the company has annual revenue to the extent of $50 million.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Biz Chair

2010-03-26T16:29:00.002+08:00

Website: Biz Chair
Founder: Sean Belnick
Place started the business: From his bedroom

He started with $500, with an initial inventory of 50 products. Now the company has 75 employees and sells more than 25000 products online. He sells office furniture, home furniture, school furniture and medical equipment in online shop. Microsoft, Google and American Idol are amongst some of his notable clients.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Digg

2010-03-26T16:26:00.001+08:00

Website: Digg
Founder: Kevin Rose
Place started the business: In his apartment.

David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech), originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin Rose wanted a simpler name. He chose the name “Digg”, because users are able to “dig” stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” had been previously registered by the Walt Disney Internet Group.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: PlentyOfFish

2010-03-26T12:51:00.002+08:00

Website: PlentyOfFish
Founder: Markus Frind
Place started the business: In his office

Back in 2001 after his birthday someone in the office introduced him to online dating sites. He went back to his desk and checked out udate.com and kiss.com and lavalife/web personals. He was bored and He wanted to chat with people. He was really annoyed when he found out you had to pay for everything, he ended up telling the girl who introduced him to the sites that he could do better and make them for free, so he went and registered Plentyoffish.com.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: Voltage

2010-03-26T12:49:00.001+08:00

Website: Voltage
Founder: Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker
Place started the business: In a basement office in the engineering building

Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker worked on the technology as a summer research project while attending Stanford. They entered a business-plan competition they won the contest. With the help of some seasoned executives, the two have created a thriving security-software business with more than 130 big-business customers and 75 employees. “It’s still amazing to me,” says Pauker.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: YouTube

2010-03-26T12:46:00.002+08:00

Website: YouTube
Founder: Chad Hurley
Place started the business: In his office

After that fateful dinner party, where Hurley and Chen wanted to create a simpler way to share their videos of the night, they immediately went to work at the office creating the answer. “In February, we started developing the product,” says Hurley. “In May, we had our first public preview. And in December, we officially launched YouTube. By that time we were serving over three million videos a day.”

Where Did They Start Their Millions: FastHost

2010-03-26T12:44:00.001+08:00

Website: FastHost
Founder: Andrew Michael
Place started the business: From his bedroom

He became a multi-millionaire after selling an internet business he started as a teenager. He started up Fasthosts as an internet project for a sixth form project at the age of 17. With the sale of Fasthosts, Mr Michael’s wealth has rocketed to £47m.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: WhatEverLife

2010-03-26T12:43:00.002+08:00

Website: WhatEverLife.com
Founder: Ashley Qualls
Place started the business: started at her kitchen office.

Started her business in 2004 with an $8 domain name and an old computer, at the age of just fourteen. She didn’t know she was starting a business at the time – she thought she was just creating an easy way to share her cool MySpace background designs with her friends.

Where Did They Start Their Millions: eBay

2010-03-26T12:41:00.001+08:00

Website: eBay
Founder: Pierre Omidyar
Place started the business: In the home of Pierre Omidyar

There aren’t many sites on the Internet that can claim the success that eBay has enjoyed. The first name eBay used was Echo Bay Technology. When the company tried to register the domain name echobay.com, they found that it was already in use. They shortened the name to eBay.com and the Website was born.

Where Did They Start Their Millions:LinkedIn

2010-03-26T12:38:00.001+08:00

Website: LinkedIn

Founder: Reid Hoffman
Place started the business: In the living room

LinkedIn was officially founded in 2003. The site was launched on May 5th (affectionately referred to by employees as “Cinco de LinkedIn”) when the five founders invited about 350 of their most important contacts to join. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network. LinkedIn’s first “real” office was on Shoreline Road in Mountain View.

How LinkedIn’s founder got started

2010-03-25T17:28:00.000+08:00

Reid Hoffman talks about his path from academia to social media.

My dad wouldn’t let me have a computer because he didn’t think it was relevant. I was in college before I actually got one. I think if he knew then what he knows now, I would have had one much earlier.

But I’ve always had an interest in how we improve people’s ecosystems — whether it’s civics or education or economics. When I was an undergrad at Stanford, I thought the way to do that was to be an academic. Then I saw that wasn’t the right way, because you become a scholar and publish in an area where only, like, 50 people will read it.

Find ways to reach people.
How do you change lives for millions of people? At Oxford [as a graduate student in philosophy] I decided software entrepreneurship was the way.

I came back to Silicon Valley and worked for Apple and then Fujitsu before starting Socialnet, an early social-networking site. After a while I didn’t agree with the direction it was going, so I talked to Peter [Thiel, co-founder of PayPal], whom I knew from Stanford. He said, “Come join us. Help us at PayPal.”

Improve users’ lives.
What I realized before PayPal was sold was that there was going to be a confluence of two forces.

One was how the world of work is changing — every individual is now somewhat entrepreneurial. They’re getting the next gig themselves.

The other was the Internet, which could empower all these individuals to establish profiles online so that people can find them. You’d be able to use your network to get access to people to better chart your path.

I started LinkedIn because changing people’s professional lives is a massive transformation. In 2003 we got financing from Sequoia Capital, and we started to get more and more people into our service. Everyone began to realize the value. That’s when I was, like, “This could work.”

Secrets of my success

• It’s okay to be brief
When people ask me about work/life balance, I just laugh. But I try to be time-efficient by scheduling meetings in appropriate increments –15 minutes or less sometimes. I’ve also tried to build a culture that understands writing brief e-mails is not emotional coldness.

• Be willing to change course
Entrepreneurs tend to believe, “I’ve got my idea, I’ll go until I die.” But I advise them to take seriously the questions about whether their [business] plan is irredeemably flawed and whether they need to change what they’re doing. Be diligent about failing fast so that you don’t spend five years doing something that’s just going to fail.

• Don’t be a perfectionist
I frequently tell Internet entrepreneurs, “If you’re not somewhat embarrassed by your 1.0 product launch, then you’ve released too late.” There’s value in launching early, getting engaged with customers, and learning from them. That can direct your progress.

Secrets of Millionaires: Business Principle #4

2010-03-24T16:00:00.000+08:00

Business Principle #4
Timing

It’s the Best of Times, the Worst of Times…How well you do depends on which side of the trends you are on.

Going Global

Going global means you have a business that has the ability for global diversification which provides worldwide expansion. Our takes all of the financial risks when opening in a new market and our compensation plan is seemless throughout the world. Someone can buy our products in Asia and you get paid in the currency from the country you reside.

Global Economic Meltdown

In February 2009, the US Labor Department reported that unemployment reached 7.6%. 11.6 million Americans are unemployed. Many of these people are professionals who are on the wrong side of trends. They are not going to find another job, because companies in their fields are not hiring!

As you may know, the economic meltdown has caused this.

Many of these very talented people will be forced into entrepreneurship and they will be looking for businesses. Are you going to be ready to profit from this large group of people?

Technology

The World is Flat has been a best-seller in book stores. It discusses how technology has changed everything. With computer, internet, and a phone line,

people are able to run multi-million dollar business from their home. The world is flat as a computer screen meaning you can video chat, present concepts, and talk through your computer and the other person can be on the other side of the planet.

Demographics

Every 8 seconds someone turns 60 years old. This group is referred to as baby-boomers. What products do baby-boomers want?

What I recommend you do is increase your financial IQ.

Secrets of Millionaires: Business Principle #3

2010-03-24T15:54:00.003+08:00

Business Principle #3

Using Leverage For Wealth

Creation

“I would rather earn 1% of 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.” – John Paul Getty, Renowned Billionaire

Trading Time For Money = No Leverage

Anyone who is an employee and working for someone else is trading time and expertise for money. Most people are “stuck” in this cycle and it is not the road to wealth.

Leverage Through Employees = Headaches

If you know anyone who is a business owner, you probably have heard them mention how their employees have caused them headaches. If you have ever worked with someone who drove you crazy, imagine how the owner of the business feels.

Leverage Through Agents

In the real estate industry, you will find the broker-agent relationship. On the surface, agents look like a solution, because you get leverage from someone

who isn’t your employee. The downside is when a broker trains an agent, the possibility is that the motivated agent will take that knowledge and training and

start their own business. The broker has lost all the time put into that agent and has gained a competitor. You just trained your competition.

Another problem with leverage throught agents is that you are limited by time meaning that you can train only so many agents at once, so your income is limited by the amount of agents you can train at once.

Broker Empowers Leadership

When a broker empowers leadership, he/she gets leverage. With this type of leverage, a broker can train agents and brokers. So, a broker could create agents and other brokers allowing them to get more leverage. Now, if you trained an agent to become a broker and that broker you train works harder than you, they make more money than you.

You always earn a percentage on what that broker generates. When a broker you train can earn more than you for working harder….what is that callled?…….that is called “fair.”

The broker will not have a need to break off from you and go into competition with you, because they have the ability to earn on their effort.

Excerpt from Retiredat32

Secrets of Millionaires: Business Principle #2

2010-03-24T15:46:00.004+08:00

Business Principle #2

Unique, Consumable Product

Why a CONSUMABLE Product?

There’s a saying in business – “You’re only as good as your last sale.”

In normal market conditions, car salesman and realtors can make good commissions, but they are unemployed until their next sale…they have to keep selling and finding new customers to make money. Think about it from this prospective….how many cars and houses do you buy a year?

A consumable product is one that people buy, use, then then buy again. Food, gas, and personal care products are examples of consumable products. When people run out, they have to buy more product creating a repeat, automatic business.

Why a UNIQUE product?

A product that has a “special thing” about it makes it unique. If you are the company that has created that product, people have to come to you. Apple created that with the iPod and iPhone.

If you don’t have a unique product, you end up competing on price. People will spend more money and often times go out of their way to purchase unique products.

So if you end up with a product that isn’t unique, then you compete on price. Imagine trying to compete with Wal Mart…that is what will happen, if you end up competing on price.

A patent can be one way keeping a product unique. If you get a U.S. Government and/or Worldwide patent, your product remains unique, because only you can produce that product with that method.

Excerpt from Retiredat32

Secrets of Millionaires: Business Principle #1

2010-03-24T15:36:00.005+08:00

Business Principle #1

Huge Expanding Market

Real Estate is a HUGE market, but it’s NOT expanding. Real estate is actually shrinking or contracting.

If you are in a market that is shrinking or contracting, your way of making money could look a lot like the real estate job market as shown in this graph below.

A huge, expanding market demonstrates the importance of evaluating the industry you are in with this principle in mind, because it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, if you are in an industry that is dying.

A perfect example is vinyl records. Do you remember vinyl records? If you are over 40, you probably do. If you are not, you might not even know what we are talking about. That is the definition of a dead market. When a product is so dead, some of the population doesn’t even remember it.

So, if you want to know the secret to Business Principle #1, then here it is: don’t be attached to your education, your current career, or your prior experience when you chose your future income. If you had been in the vinyl record industry, you wouldn’t have had a job in very short order. This industry went from $7 billion to zero in seven years.

Coming soon the Secrets of Millionaires: Business Principle # 2. Keep visiting.

How a Millionaire’s Brain Works

2010-03-23T17:09:00.002+08:00

Posted by Robin Bal

A man walked into a bank in New York City one day and asked for the loan officer.

He told the loan officer that he was going to Philippines on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000. The bank officer told him that the bank would need some form of security for the loan.

Then the man handed over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produced the title and everything checked out The loan officer agreed to accept the car as collateral for the loan.The bank’s president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at the guy for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parked it there.Two weeks later, the guy returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest, which came to $15.41.

The loan officer said, “Sir, we are very happy to have had and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow “$5,000″.

The millionaire replied: “Where else in New York City can I park my car for $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return”

Well thats how the rich stay rich, they know a lot more about Money Management. All the millionaires I have met in my life were penny wise. Look after your cents and the Dollars will look after themselves.

You may post your comments below for the lessons you have learned from this story.

Richest Kids in America: Very Sweet Young Success Stories

2010-03-23T17:07:00.000+08:00

Report from moneywatch.com:

ALLYSON AMES
President and co-founder of Wonderland Bakery
http://wonderlandbakery.com

Wonderland Bakery’s president and co-founder, Celebrity Chef Allyson Ames, was named one of the richest kids in America by Mark Victor Hansen, respected authority in the area of human potential and creator of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Hansen’s new book, The Richest Kids in America, is the result of a three-year research project in which he set out to chronicle the journeys of North America’s most successful young entrepreneurial superstars.

Hansen tells the inspiring story of Ames, 23, who has steadfastly pursued her passion for baking and childhood dream of having her own “wonderland.”

Allyson Ames will begin a media tour sharing her story including NBC’s The Today Show, August 3rd at 10:00am and CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, August 11th at 7:00am.

Ames has created Wonderland Bakery, a unique retail bakery concept specializing in cupcakes, cookies, artistic cakes and whimsical gifts. An enchanting mix of equal parts Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, Alice’s Wonderland and Candyland, Ames and Wonderland Bakery’s celebrity following has earned national media attention.

She has created cookies for President Barack Obama’s inauguration day events, baked the reigning “Best Gingerbread Cookie” according to Whoopi Goldberg and The View, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger honored Wonderland Bakery with the 2008 California Business of the Year Award.

Ames is a culinary prodigy who started cooking and baking at age five, and was named The Best Young Chef in America at age 17. She is the Official Sweet Ambassador for Newport Beach and has been tapped as one of the hottest Hollywood celebrities under the age of 25 by Variety magazine.

She has recently added to her brand a collection of “Bake Memories at Home” desserts, a mesmerizing line of merchandise, a best-selling book, Wonderlicious The Enchanting and Delicious Wonderland Bakery Adventure, a read-a-long book for the animated Allyson Wonderland bear by Gund.

This holiday season, Ames will commence an expansion plan that includes whimsically designed point-of-sale displays that will be placed in retail locations from coast to coast. She is in negotiations to host a children’s cooking show; internationally license the Wonderland Bakery brand of toys, games and products; and will expand with five new Wonderlicious party, cafe and retail stores in major markets, with the first stores in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

“Allyson Ames has an amazing story that will inspire other entrepreneurs to dream big, make it work and build a commanding brand,” said Hansen.

20 ONLINE BUSINESS TIPS

2010-03-23T17:05:00.000+08:00

TOP 20 ONLINE BUSINESS SUCCESS TIPS
by Gail Buckley

1. Do something you love.
2. Believe in yourself and think positive.
3. Even though it’s home-based, it’s still work.
4. Only fools rush in – don’t be one of them.
5. Your computer is your lifeline, make sure it’s reliable.
6. Don’t jump the gun in deciding what you’re going to sell.
7. Plan, plan… and then plan some more.
8. Stand out from the crowd.
9. Design a content rich, customer-friendly site around your USP (or have one designed for you).
10. Pick a domain name that is catchy and easy to remember.
11. Don’t scrimp when it comes to selecting a hosting service.
12. Make it easy for your prospects to purchase from you.
13. Keep your site up-to-date.
14. Establish your presence online.
15. Keep track of your successes and failures.
16. Build your own opt-in list.
17. Consistently follow-up with all your customers.
18. Be patient and consistent in your promotional efforts.
19. Don’t rest on your laurels.
20. Above all, stay committed to your plans and goals -regardless of how long it takes to realize them.

Suggestions in Keeping Up Your Online Store in Economic Downturns

2010-03-23T17:02:00.000+08:00

Here is a few suggestions I got in the Volusions active staff:

Jennifer S.
“Solidify your design by making it more consistent through your site. If you already have a consistent design, try taking it a step further into your advertising and just add some little things to make your store feel more like an experience.”

Jeri B.
“Maintain a simplified color palette throughout your entire site. It will add a harmonious look and feel to your site, and make it appear more professional and easy to navigate.”

Jon B.
Get familiar with the many design tools on the web. Here are just a few I suggest:
http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk Modern Design Tips
http://www.dafont.com Free fonts that won’t lock up Photoshop
http://www.colorschemer.com Give your site color harmony
http://www.resizr.com A free way to resize your photos
http://www.istockphoto.com Stock photos for $1

Sandra N.
“Execute more mini projects. Divide a main project into smaller projects with a smaller scope so that each “mini” project can be easily completed in a shorter amount of time. This leads to a better sense of accomplishment, don’t you think?”

Michelle B.
“Make it more of a point to get feedback from family and friends to evaluate your site regularly. Your goal could be to ask someone for feedback once a week, five times a month, or any schedule that will work for you. Start with a specific area (design, navigation, product descriptions, images, etc.) and ask for comments in that specific area. This will allow you to focus on one area at a time, and create a specific “To-Do” List for that section before moving on to the next.”

Kate P.
“Add to your credibility as an online company in the eyes of potential customers. Have a clear return policy/money back guarantee posted, and make sure that customers can readily find it before they order. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you were duped by a company because they hid their policies or made it nearly impossible for you to return items.”

AmyLynn K.
“Make it a point to improve your on-page SEO. A lot of people just put sizes into their product descriptions, but is that really describing the product? You could describe its various sizes, what it’s for, and so much more about it. This in and of itself will make search engine spiders like your site a whole lot more.”

Stacie L.
“If you haven’t done so already, now’s the time to start running online ads. It’s a great way to gain exposure and possible sales, especially if your site isn’t ranking well in search engines. A few quick tips: direct campaigns to landing pages to better target traffic, monitor campaigns often and write ad text that is relevant to what the searcher is looking for. Always keep in mind that those reaching your site have already searched, so don’t make them search more after clicking on your ad. See the Search Engine Marketing section for more tips on setting up online ad campaigns.”

Adam H.
“Off page SEO is huge for improving your search engine rankings. Create a blog to link back to your store. Write articles or ask bloggers to review your products. Making a point this year to increase your backlinks can pay huge dividends in the end for your business.”

Let’s continue doing business! Good luck!

Surviving Economic Crisis and Still Earning

2010-03-23T14:23:00.000+08:00

How to Survive the Economic Crisis by Starting Your Own Home Money Machine
by Fabian Tan

These are times when most of us can help ourselves to a few hundred dollars in the least so that the impact of the economic down turn is negated at least in part. Thanks to the internet, there are several home business ideas to tide over this crisis ridden period. Let us consider some of these home business ideas for your benefit.

1. Identify some evergreen areas

By jumping into an money-generating idea, we don’t want to add to our trouble. The best way therefore, would be to identify evergreen areas develop home business around those areas. As an example, it does not call for any major technical know how or investment to create a blog, or rather a few blogs and promote it through regular blog posts. Almost anyone can do this and you will some money – may be to meet your phone bills.

2. Consider information products

Creating Ebooks and marketing them is yet another secure idea for making profits which can be pursued by people with basic education and a computer. There are different methods of earning through Ebooks and a detailed research will tell you how easy it is to make a few hundred dollars every month from this home business.

3. Forum postings

There are thousands of forums in the internet and all these forums need fresh content at regular intervals. People who have business interests in these forums cannot find the time to do these postings at the desired intervals. This very simple job/business is outsourced and can be taken up by almost anyone.

Top 5 Highest Earner Per Minute

2010-03-23T10:28:00.000+08:00

Top 5 Highest Earner Per Minute

Believe this or not, this list shows you how much this persons earn each minute.

	Name	Earnings Per Minute
	Bill Gates	$ 6,659.00
	Warren Edward Buffet	$ 5,594.00
	Carlos Slim Helu	$ 3,995.00
	Ingvar Kamprad	$ 3,729.00
	Lakshmi Mittal	$ 3,130.00

Another millionaire list, ops, this is the billionaires list.

Source: Forbes Magazine

The World’s Billionaires 2009 – Top 25

2010-03-23T10:27:00.000+08:00

The World’s Billionaires 2009

Enjoy this wonderful top list!

Rank	Name	Citizenship	Age	NetWorth($bil)	Residence
1	William Gates III	United States	53	40.0	United States
2	Warren Buffett	United States	78	37.0	United States
3	Carlos Slim Helu & family	Mexico	69	35.0	Mexico
4	Lawrence Ellison	United States	64	22.5	United States
5	Ingvar Kamprad & family	Sweden	83	22.0	Switzerland
6	Karl Albrecht	Germany	89	21.5	Germany
7	Mukesh Ambani	India	51	19.5	India
8	Lakshmi Mittal	India	58	19.3	United Kingdom
9	Theo Albrecht	Germany	87	18.8	Germany
10	Amancio Ortega	Spain	73	18.3	Spain
11	Jim Walton	United States	61	17.8	United States
12	Alice Walton	United States	59	17.6	United States
12	Christy Walton & family	United States	54	17.6	United States
12	S Robson Walton	United States	65	17.6	United States
15	Bernard Arnault	France	60	16.5	France
16	Li Ka-shing	Hong Kong	80	16.2	Hong Kong
17	Michael Bloomberg	United States	67	16.0	United States
18	Stefan Persson	Sweden	61	14.5	Sweden
19	Charles Koch	United States	73	14.0	United States
19	David Koch	United States	68	14.0	United States
21	Liliane Bettencourt	France	86	13.4	France
22	Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud	Saudi Arabia	54	13.3	Saudi Arabia
23	Michael Otto & family	Germany	65	13.2	Germany
24	David Thomson & family	Canada	51	13.0	Canada
25	Michael Dell	United States	44	12.3	United States

Source: Forbes Magazine

Congratulations! This is not a millionaires list, this is the Billionaires List

30 Websites That Sold For A Lot Of Money

2010-03-22T16:50:00.001+08:00

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

Rank	Website	Acquired By	Price	Acquisition Date
1	Aquantive	Microsoft	$6,333,000,000	13-Aug-2007
2	Broadcast	Yahoo!	$5,700,000,000	1-Apr-1999
3	Geocities	Yahoo!	$3,600,000,000	28-May-1999
4	Youtube	Google	$1,650,000,000	9-Oct-2006
5	Marketing Yahoo!	Yahoo!	$1,630,000,000	14-Jun-2003
6	Bebo	AOL	$850,000,000	13-Mar-2008
7	Tell Me	Microsoft	$800,000,000	14-Mar-2007
8	Club Penguin	Disney	$700,000,000	1-Aug-2007
9	Right Media	Yahoo!	$680,000,000	29-Apr-2007
10	Real Media 24/7	WPP	$649,000,000	17-May-2007
11	Postini	Google	$625,000,000	16-Nov-2006
12	MySpace	News Corp	$580,000,000	18-Jul-2005
13	Adult Friend Finder	Penthouse Media Group	$500,000,000	11-Dec-2007
14	Mezi Media	ValueClick	$352,000,000	16-Jul-2007
15	Zimbra	Yahoo!	$350,000,000	17-Sep-2007
16	Business	R.H. Donnelley	$345,000,000	26-Jul-2007
17	Blue Lithium	Yahoo!	$300,000,000	4-Sep-2007
18	Audible	Amazon	$300,000,000	31-Jan-2008
19	Last FM	CBS	$280,000,000	30-May-2007
20	Tacoda	AOL	$275,000,000	24-Jul-2007
21	How Stuff Works	Discovery	$250,000,000	15-Oct-2007
22	Photo Bucket	Fox Interactive	$250,000,000	30-May-2007
23	Hitwise	Experian	$240,000,000	19-Apr-2007
24	Sidestep	Kayak	$200,000,000	20-Dec-2007
25	Fandango	Comcast	$200,000,000	11-Apr-2007
26	Web Dialogs	IBM	$161,000,000	22-Aug-2007
27	Havok	Intel	$110,000,000	14-Sep-2007
28	Ugo	Hearst	$100,000,000	24-Jul-2007
29	Feedburner	Google	$100,000,000	23-May-2007
30	iStock Photo	Getty Images, Inc.	$50,000,000	9-Feb-2006

Another Internet Millionaire Stories

30 Blog’s That Make A Lot Of Money Online

2010-03-22T16:48:00.000+08:00

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

Rank	Website	Owner	Monthly Earnings	Main Income
1	Techcrunch	Michael Arrington	$200,000	Advertising Banners
2	Mashable	Pete Cashmore	$180,000	Advertising Banners
3	Perez Hilton	Mario Lavandeira	$140,000	Advertising Banners
4	Gothamist	Jake Dobkin	$80,000	Pay Per Click
5	Timothy Sykes	Timothy Sykes	$80,000	Affiliate Sales
6	Venture Beat	Matt Marshall	$62,000	Pay Per Click
7	Life Hacker	Nick Denton	$60,000	Advertising Banners
8	Tuts Plus	Collis Taeed	$55,000	Advertising Banners
9	Smashing Magazine	Vitaly Friedman	$50,000	Advertising Banners
10	Steve Pavlina	Steve Pavlina	$45,000	Pay Per Click
11	TPM	Josh Marshall	$45,000	Pay Per Click
12	Car Advice	Alborz Fallah	$42,000	Advertising Banners
13	JohnChow	John Chow	$35,000	Affiliate Sales
14	Kotaku	Nick Denton	$32,000	Advertising Banners
15	Coolest Gadgets	Allan Carlton	$30,000	Advertising Banners
16	Problogger	Darren Rowse	$25,000	Advertising Banners
17	Joystiq	AOL	$18,000	CPM Advertising
18	PC Mech	David Risley	$16,000	Affiliate Sales
19	Shoemoney	Jeremy Schoemaker	$12,000	Private Advertising
20	Informasi Dan Tips	Mustofa Alaydrus	$9,500	Pay Per Click
21	Sizlopedia	Saad Hamid	$9,000	Pay Per Click
22	Retire at 21	Michael Dunlop	$5,000	Affiliate Sales
23	Noupe	Noupe	$4,930	Advertising Banners
24	Uber Affiliate	Paul Bourque	$4,500	Second Tear Affiliates
25	Abduzeedo	Fabio Sasso	$3,920	Advertising Banners
26	Click For Nick	Nick Skeba	$3,900	Pay Per Click
27	Tyler Cruz	Tyler Cruz	$3,200	Advertising Banners
28	Just Creative Design	Jacob Cass	$3,000	Services
29	Sizzled Core	Haris Nadeem	$3,000	Pay Per Click
30	Filmonic	Liam Goodwin	$2,200	CPM Advertising

30 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs

2010-03-22T12:53:00.000+08:00

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.

Rank	Name	Website	Year Website Launched	Net Worth
1	Larry Page	Google	1998	$18.5 Billion
2	Sergey Brin	Google	1998	$18.5 Billion
3	Jeff Bezos	Amazon	1994	$8.7 Billlion
4	Pierre Omidyar	eBay	1995	$6.3 Billion
5	Eric Schmidt	Google	1998	$5.9 Billion
6	Ronald Burkle	Yahoo	1995	$3.5 Billion
7	Mark Cuban	Broadcast.com	1995	$2.6 Billion
8	Jerry Yang	Yahoo	1995	$2.3 Billion
9	Omid Kordestani	Google	1998	$1.9 Billion
10	David Filo	Yahoo	1995	$1.7 Billion
11	Kavitark Ram Shriram	Google	1998	$1.7 Billion
12	Todd Wagner	Broadcast.com	1995	$1.5 Billion
13	Peter Thiel	PayPal	1998	$1.3 Billion
14	Niklas Zennstrom	Skype	2003	$1.3 Billion
15	Janus Friis	Skype	2003	$1.3 Billion
16	Jack Ma	Alibaba	1999	$1.1 Billion
17	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	2004	$700 Million
18	Simon Nixon	MoneySuperMarket	1999	$680 Million
19	Andrew Gower	Runescape	2001	$650 Million
20	Reid Hoffman	LinkedIn	2003	$500 Million
21	Zhang Chaoyang	Sohu	1996	$425 Million
22	Steve Chen	YouTube	2005	$350 Million
23	Elon Musk	PayPal	1998	$328 Million
24	Chad Hurley	YouTube	2005	$300 Million
25	Duncan Cameron	MoneySuperMarket	1999	$280 Million
26	Marc Andreesen	Netscape	1994	$253 Million
27	Reed Hastings	NetFlix	1997	$150 Million
28	Blake Ross	Mozila	1998	$120 Million
29	Andrew Michael	Fasthost	1999	$110 Million
30	Max Levchin	PayPal	1998	$100 Million

Another Internet Millionaire Stories

30 Female Entrepreneurs Making Money Online

2010-03-22T12:50:00.000+08:00

Name	Company	Founded	Why She Matters
Amanda Marcotte	Pandagon	26-Nov-01	Amanda runs one of the most talked about feminism and politics blogs. Marcotte shot to fame when John Edwards asked her to run the presedential blog.
Ariana Huffington	Huffington Post	09-May-05	Is perhaps one of the most successful female Internet entrepreneurs ever and is the founder of the top blog in the world according to Technorati!
Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	2004	Attracting millions of monthly visitors earning the 18 year old 7 figures a year.
Barbara Feldman	Surfnetkids.com	29-Jun-05	Founder of Surfnetkids, the website attracts more than 600,000 visitors a month, her newsletter lists are over 80,000 strong, and her self-published e-books are sold on dozens of sites.
Carrie Wilkerson	The Bare foot Executive	2007	In 2 years Carrie has gone from in debt to 7 figure Internet entrepreneur with over 100,000 followers!
Caterina Fake	Flickr	26-Jun-05	Caterina co-founded Flickr with Stewart Butterfield which was later acquired by Yahoo! for a high 8 figure deal.
Catherine Cook	MyYearBook.com	27-Jun-05	Start 4 years ago when she was 15, MyYearBook has grown to 3 million members worldwide and rakes in annual sales in the seven figures!
Cyan Ta’eed	Eden Creative	2006	Ta’eed is the co-founder of Eden Creative Communities which attracts over 10 million visitors to their blog network every month earning her 7 figures a year.
Eileen Gittins	Blurb	26-Jun-05	Elieen is the co-founder and CEO of Blurb, a print on demand publishing service. The company’s revenue grew from $1 million to $30 million in two years.
Elaine Wherry	Meebo	01-Sep-05	Elaine co-founded Meebo, a instant messaging service you use in your browser. Meebo attracts 40,000,000 monthly users.
Erin Jansen	NetLingo.com	21-Jun-05	Founder of an Award-Winning Web Site since 1994, Erin is a Internet entrepreneur veteran.
Gina Bianchini	Ning	01-Oct-05	Gina is the Co-founder and CEO of Ning. There are 1,000,000 social networks on the Ning Platform, growing at a rate of almost 4,000 new social networks each day.
Gina Trapani	Lifehacker	01-Jan-05	Gina Trapani is a technology blogger, book author, and programmer. The founding editor of Lifehacker.com, a daily weblog on software and personal productivity, Gina authored a book based on the web site which is in its second edition: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better!
Heather Armstrong	Dooce	01-Feb-01	One of the biggest mommy blogger’s out there attracting millions of readers to her blog and has recently passed 500,000 Twitter followers.
Juliette Brindak	Miss O and Friends	22-Jun-05	Juliette came up with the idea for Miss O and Friends at just 10 years old, now 19 her business is worth over $15 Million and is visited by millions of girls every month.
Justine Ezarik	iJustine	27-Jun-05	It all started with a 300 page iPhone bill, now she is a social media rock star with millions of YouTube views and over 500,000 twitter followers!
Kim Polese	SpikeSource	25-Jun-05	Kim Karin Polese is CEO of SpikeSource, and was one of the most prominent Silicon Valley executives during the dot-com era. In 1997, she made Time Magazine’s list of “The 25 Most Influential Americans”.
Lisa Stone	Blog Her	01-Feb-05	Lisa is the founder of BlogHer which reaches more than 14 million women monthly through its conferences, Internet site and publishing networks.
Lisa Sugar	Pop Sugar	April 2006	Lisa’s blog network is funded by Sequoia – the guys who funded Google and Youtube. Now one of the biggest celeb blogs on the net, Lisa sure is a top female blogger!
Louise Wannier	MyShape	26-Jun-05	Louise runs an online women’s apparel retailer that finds clothing for women based on their physical measurements and style and fit preferences
Maria Andros	Social Media Traffic Blueprint		Maria helps people create a buzz with social media. Recently she took 100 people into her mentoring program for $2500 each.
Meg Frost	Cute Overload	2005	Although she hasn’t got a pet herself, attracts 100,000s of visitors daily to her cute animal blog.
Meg Hourihan	Blogger.com	21-Jun-05	Meg Hourihan is the cofounder of Pyra Labs, the company that launched the Blogger personal blogging software that was acquired by Google for for a 8 figure deal.
Mena Trott	Six Apart	23-Jun-05	Mena is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad.
Michelle Malkin	Michelle Malkin	June 2004	Michelle blogs about news and politics which attracts nearly 200,000 visitors a day to her site.
Penelope Trunk	Brazen Careerist	March 2006	With multiple start-ups and over 30,000 RSS readers on her personal blog, Penelope is one female to follow.
Nancy J Price	she knows	1999	Nancy co-founded SheKnows which attracts 7.5 Million Monthly Unique Visitors and 76 Million Monthly Page Views!
Natalie Massenet	Net-A-Porter	22-Jun-05	Eight years ago she’d never even been on the internet. This year Natalie Massenet turned over £37 million with Net-a-Porter, the fashion website that has become a global phenomenon.
Rachna Kingston	Entheos	30-May-08	Is a pregnant work at home mum who runs a web design resource website that attracts over a million visitors a month!
Xeni Jardin	Boing Boing	22-Jun-05	Xeni is the editor of one of the top 5 blogs in the world, Boing Boing.

Spelling A Millionaire Business: Sticks and Stones

2010-03-22T12:48:00.001+08:00

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

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!

Web Hosting and Services Millionaire: iPower

2010-03-22T12:43:00.000+08:00

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.

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!

Multi-Million Dollar Retail and Online Community Business: Karmaloop

2010-03-19T15:25:00.000+08:00

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.”

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!

Internet Millionaire Gamer: Popcap.com

2010-03-19T13:56:00.000+08:00

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.

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!

Millionaire Thread: Threadless.com

2010-03-19T13:55:00.000+08:00

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

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!

12 Pitfalls of Starting a Business

2010-03-19T13:53:00.000+08:00

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.

The 2009 List Of Tech Billionaires And How Much They Lost

2009-12-14T15:58:00.000+08:00

Forbes released its list of the world’s billionaires and it looks like the U.S. tech billionaires took a pretty hefty hit from the economic crisis. The 40 tech billionaires we identified on the list collectively lost $81.5 billion compared to their standing in last year’s list. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.4 trillion in net worth that disappeared from the entire Forbes’ list, which also saw the total number of billionaires drop to 793 from 1,125, the first year-to-year decrease since 2003.

2009 Rank (2008)	Name (Company)	Net Worth	Change From 2008
#1 (#3)	William Gates III (Microsoft)	$40.0 billion	-$18.0 billion
#4 (#14)	Larry Ellison (Oracle)	$22.5 billion	-$2.5 billion
#17 (#65)	Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg)	$16 billion	+$5 billion
#29 (#40)	Michael Dell (Dell)	$12.3 billion	-$4.1 billion
#26 (#32)	Sergey Brin (Google)	$12 billion	-$6.7 billion
#26 (#33)	Larry Page (Google)	$11 billion	-$4 billion
#29 (#43)	Steven Ballmer (Microsoft)	$11 billion	-$4 billion
#32 (#41)	Paul Allen (Microsoft)	$10.5 billion	-$5.5 billion
#68 (#110)	Jeffrey Bezos (Amazon)	$6.8 billion	-$1.4 billion
#119 (#142)	Eric Schmidt (Google)	$4.4 billion	-$2.2 billion
#132 (#109)	Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.)	$4 billion	-$4.3 billion
#146 (#87)	Charles Ergen (EchoStar)	$3.9 billion	-$5.6 billion
#156 (#120)	Pierre Omidyar (Ebay)	$3.6 billion	-$4.4 billion
#178 (#189)	Steven Jobs (Apple)	$3.4 billion	-$2 billion
#196 (#236)	John Sall (SAS Institute)	$3.1 billion	-$1.3 billion
#205 (#277)	George Lucas (LucasArts)	$3.0 billion	-$0.9 billion
#246 (#288)	Gordon Moore (Intel)	$2.6 billion	-$1.1 billion
#261 (#462)	David Sun (Kingston Technologies)	$2.5 billion	0
#261 (#462)	John Tu (Kingston Technologies)	$2.5 billion	0
#296 (#446)	Mark Cuban (Broadcast.com)	$2.3 billion	-$0.3 billion
#296 (#307)	Ray Dolby (Dolby)	$2.3 billion	-$1.2 billion
#397 (#286)	Jeffrey Skoll (Ebay)	$1.8 billion	-$1.8 billion
#430 (#503)	William Randolph Hearst III (Media, Kleiner Perkins)	$1.7 billion	-$0.7 billion
#468 (#652)	Thomas Siebel (Siebel Systems)	$1.5 billion	-$0.4 billion
#522 (#605)	Andreas von Bechtolsheim (Sun, Google investor)	$1.4 billion	-$0.6 billion
#522 (#533)	Omid Kordestani (Google)	$1.4 billion	-$0.8 billion
#559 (#652)	Henry Samueli (Broadcom)	$1.3 billion	-$0.6 billion
#559 (#462)	Craig McCaw (McCaw Cellular)	$1.3 billion	-$1.2 billion
#559 (#743)	Irwin Jacobs (Qualcomm)	$1.3 billion	-$0.3 billion
#559 (#785)	Todd Wagner (Broadcast.com)	$1.3 billion	-$0.2 billion
#601 (#707)	L. John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins)	$1.2 billion	-$0.5 billion
#601 (#677)	Henry Nicholas III (Broadcom)	$1.2 billion	-$0.6 billion
#601 (#461)	David Filo (Yahoo)	$1.2 billion	-$1.3 billion
#647 (#785)	Vinod Khosla (Kleiner Perkins)	$1.1 billion	-$0.4 billion
#701 (#137)	Sumner Redstone (Viacom)	$1 billion	-$5.8 billion
#701 (#897)	Scott Cook (Intuit)	$1 billion	-$0.3 billion
#701 (#897)	David Duffield (PeopleSoft)	$1 billion	-$0.3 billion
#701 (#897)	Barry Diller (IAC)	$1 billion	-$0.3 billion
#701 (#847)	Richard Egan (EMC)	$1 billion	-$0.4 billion
#701 (#785)	Theodore Waitt (Gateway)	$1 billion	-$0.5 billion
40 names	Totals	$203.4 billion	-$81.5 billion

The Rabbit and The Turtle Race

2009-12-10T14:50:00.001+08:00

Remember the famous Rabbit-Turtle race (Tortoise and the Hare)? We all know that at the end of the story the Rabbit was not able to win the race against the Turtle.

Well, this is actually not the end of the story. After a disgraceful loss to the Turtle, the Rabbit decided to have a race again. This time, he decided, he would not take a nap.

The race started & soon the Rabbit was far away from the sight of the Turtle & all the spectators. This time he didn't stop & defeated the Turtle by a big margin.

The Turtle lost the race this time; however, he didn't give up. He challenged the Rabbit again on a different racetrack. The Rabbit, full of confidence, accepted it. He knew the reason he lost earlier: his laziness during the first race. He was able to win the second race because he was able to work on it.

The Third Race started. The Rabbit, like always, soon disappeared. Everyone was laughing at the Turtle but the Rabbit didn't want to stop to see why & kept on running as fast as he could. He wanted to defeat the Turtle by a much bigger margin than the earlier race. Suddenly, he came to a river. He was not able to make out how to cross it & was forced to stop.

After some time the Turtle reached the river & very confidently stepped into it. He swam much faster than he could ever run. Within no time he crossed the river & moved towards the finishing point while the Rabbit helplessly looked on as the Turtle won the race.

The story does not end here.

After the first race, the Rabbit learned that he lost it because of his laziness.

After second race, the Turtle learned that he lost the race because his opponent was actually good at running.

After the third race, the Rabbit learned that being faster is not enough; one should have brains as well to complete the task.

The Rabbit & the Turtle decided to run again. This time it was just running & not a race.

While running, until they reached the river, the Rabbit put the Turtle on his back. Once they needed to cross the river, the Turtle put the Rabbit on his back. After crossing the river, the Rabbit again put the Turtle on his back & both of them reached the finishing point in less time than ever.

What did they learn?

They both learned that with teamwork they can finish the same task quicker & both of them can enjoy the reward. During the time they were competing against one another, just one of them was able to win after wasting a lot of time & energy.

HERE SHOW HOW IMPORTANT IS THE TEAMWORK,
TEAM, Together Everyone Achieve More

"Look at your past. Your past has determined where you are at this moment. What you do today will determine where you are tomorrow. Are you moving forward or standing still?" --Tom Hopkins

Remember we control our Destiny.

Sunday Times 2008 Young Rich List

2009-08-23T10:53:00.002+08:00

The Rich List is published each year by the British newspaper the Sunday Times to highlight the richest people in the United Kingdom.

The Young Rich List is an extension of this for the 100 richest people aged 30 or younger.

The list

1 Camilla Hagen - £225m Retailing
2 Arthur Landon - £200m Inheritance
3 Dhani Harrison - £160m Inheritance
4 Fawn and India Rose James - £150m Inheritance
5 Andrew Gower - £109m Computer games
6 The Earl of Pembroke - £105m Land
7 Richard Walters - £100m Plant and equipment
8 James Benamor - £77m Finance -* Richmond Group
9 Valentino Rossi - £75m Motorcycle racing
10= Andrew Michael - £54m Internet
10= Thomas O'Donohoe - £54m Telecoms
12 Michael Owen - £41m football
13= Jenson Button - £35m Motor racing
13= Prince William and Prince Harry - £35m Land, Inheritance
13= Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin - £35m football , Media
16 Vanessa-Mae Nicholson - £32m Music
17= Guy Berryman - £30m Music
17= Jonny Buckland - £30m Music
17= Katie Price - £30m Fashion
17= Kiera Chaplin - £30m Films
17= Will Champion - £30m Music
22 Rio Ferdinand - £29m football
23= Adam Hildreth - £25m Computers
23= Karen Elson and Jack White - £25m Fashion, Music
25 Max Richard and family - £21m Property
26 Daniel Radcliffe - £20m Films
27= Frank Lampard - £19m football
27= Steven Gerrard - £19m football
29= Jamie Harwood - £18m Internet
29= Katie Melua - £18m Music
29= Keira Knightley - £18m Films
29= Ricky Hatton - £18m Boxing
33 John Terry - £16m football
34= Charles Walton - £15m Internet retailing
34= Cristiano Ronaldo - £15m football
34= Lewis Hamilton - £15m Motor racing
34= Richard Jones - £15m Internet
38 Damien Duff - £14m football
39= Didier Drogba - £13m football
39= Mitchell Carr - £13m Lottery
39= Harry Kewell - £13m football
39= The Earl of Shaftesbury - £13m Land
42= Emile Heskey - £12m football
42= Erin O'Connor - £12m Modelling
42= Joss Stone - £12m Music
42= Kieron Dyer - £12m football
42= Lisa Ratliffe - £12m Modelling
42= Perminder Bassi - £12m Mobile phones
42= Vivien Solari - £12m Modelling
49= Ashley Cole - £11m football
49= Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson - £11m Music, Rugby
49= Joe Cole - £11m football
49= Jonny Wilkinson - £11m Rugby
49= Natalia Vodianova - £11m Modelling
49= Nicolas Anelka - £11m football
55= Amy Winehouse - £10m Music
55= Craig David - £10m Music
55= Emma Watson - £10m Films
55= Luke Donald - £10m Golf
55= Michael Essien - £10m football
55= Mike Welch - £10m Tyres
55= Will Young - £10m Music
62= Craig Bellamy - £9m football
62= Katherine Jenkins - £9m Music
62= Robbie Keane - £9m football
65= Dan Wheldon - £8m Motor racing
65= James Toseland - £8m Motorcycling
65= Jonathan Kaye - £8m Restaurants
65= Jonathan Woodgate - £8m football
65= Liberty Ross - £8m Modelling
65= Richa Murgai - £8m Mobile phones
71= Barclay Littlewood - £7m Internet
71= Imran Kara - £7m Trade
71= James Murray Wells and family - £7m Internet, Spectacles
71= Justin Rose - £7m Golf
71= Louis Saha - £7m football
71= Rupert Grint - £7m Films
77= Andy Murray - £6m Tennis
77= Corinne Bailey Rae - £6m Music
77= Daniel Loughran - £6m Fuel
77= Fernando Torres - £6m football
77= Imraan Ladak - £6m Recruitment services
77= Jamie Carragher - £6m football
77= Kavineet Dhanda and family - £6m Drinks
77= Leona Lewis - £6m Music
77= Lily Cole - £6m Modelling
77= Mark Davis - £6m Finance
77= Natasha Bedingfield - £6m Music
77= Neel Chawla - £6m Country club
77= Paul Casey - £6m Golf
77= Ross and Ryan Bawn - £6m Property
77= Shaun Wright-Phillips - £6m football
77= Simon Webbe - £6m Music
77= William Gallas - £6m football
94= Barnaby Cardwell - £5m Finance
94= Cesc Fabregas - £5m football
94= Dominic McVey - £5m Pharmaceuticals, Cosmetics, Property
94= Graeme McDowell - £5m Golf
94= Jamie Cullum - £5m Music
94= Luol Deng - £5m Basketball
94= Simon Chorlton - £5m Direct marketing

Philippines Billionaires

2009-07-02T08:51:00.005+08:00

This list show the 2 known Billionaire in the Philippines according to forbes magazine.

Henry Sy & family

Net Worth:$2.7 bil
Fortune:self made
Source:malls
Age:84
Country Of Citizenship:Philippines
Residence:Manila
Industry:Diversified
Education:NA,
Marital Status:married, 6 children

The richest man in the Philippines arrived there at age 13 from China to help out at father's small convenience store. Saved to start a small shoe store in Manila and built it into one of the country's largest retailers. Now controls the Philippines' largest shopping mall developer, SM Prime Holdings, which opened its 31st mall last year, run by son Hans Sy; country's largest bank, Banco de Oro Unibank, run by daughter Teresita Sy-Coson. Shares fortune, which includes stakes in a dozen companies with wife and children. Last year bought a 60% stake in Manila's National University for an undisclosed sum. In December family's SM Investment Corp. announced plans to start building casinos in Manila.

Lucio Tan & family

Net Worth:$1.4 bil

Fortune:self made
Source:diversified
Age:74
Country Of Citizenship:Philippines
Residence:Manila
Industry:Diversified
Education:Far Eastern University, Bachelor of Arts / Science,
Marital Status:married, 6 children

Former chemical engineer from China mopped floors to pay for school. Now owns the Philippines' largest cigarette maker, Fortune Tobacco; Philippine Airlines; Asia Brewery; mining operations; banks; property developments in Hong Kong. Cigarettes and alcohol continue to do well during the downturn, but his property company, Eton, has been hit by lower property values and rents in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia. Being prosecuted by the Presidential Commission on Good Governance, which claims that much of Tan's wealth belonged to former president Ferdinand Marcos and should be returned to the country. Hobbies include flying helicopters.

Congratulations!

30 Female Entrepreneurs Making Money Online

2009-05-15T11:46:00.001+08:00

Thanks to Michael for having this list. This will surely inspire a lot of women!

Happy Mothers day!

30 Female Entrepreneurs Making Money Online

Name	Company	Founded	Why She Matters
Amanda Marcotte	Pandagon	26-Nov-01	Amanda runs one of the most talked about feminism and politics blogs. Marcotte shot to fame when John Edwards asked her to run the presedential blog.
Ariana Huffington	Huffington Post	09-May-05	Is perhaps one of the most successful female Internet entrepreneurs ever and is the founder of the top blog in the world according to Technorati!
Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	2004	Attracting millions of monthly visitors earning the 18 year old 7 figures a year.
Barbara Feldman	Surfnetkids.com	29-Jun-05	Founder of Surfnetkids, the website attracts more than 600,000 visitors a month, her newsletter lists are over 80,000 strong, and her self-published e-books are sold on dozens of sites.
Carrie Wilkerson	The Bare foot Executive	2007	In 2 years Carrie has gone from in debt to 7 figure Internet entrepreneur with over 100,000 followers!
Caterina Fake	Flickr	26-Jun-05	Caterina co-founded Flickr with Stewart Butterfield which was later acquired by Yahoo! for a high 8 figure deal.
Catherine Cook	MyYearBook.com	27-Jun-05	Start 4 years ago when she was 15, MyYearBook has grown to 3 million members worldwide and rakes in annual sales in the seven figures!
Cyan Ta’eed	Eden Creative	2006	Ta’eed is the co-founder of Eden Creative Communities which attracts over 10 million visitors to their blog network every month earning her 7 figures a year.
Eileen Gittins	Blurb	26-Jun-05	Elieen is the co-founder and CEO of Blurb, a print on demand publishing service. The company’s revenue grew from $1 million to $30 million in two years.
Elaine Wherry	Meebo	01-Sep-05	Elaine co-founded Meebo, a instant messaging service you use in your browser. Meebo attracts 40,000,000 monthly users.
Erin Jansen	NetLingo.com	21-Jun-05	Founder of an Award-Winning Web Site since 1994, Erin is a Internet entrepreneur veteran.
Gina Bianchini	Ning	01-Oct-05	Gina is the Co-founder and CEO of Ning. There are 1,000,000 social networks on the Ning Platform, growing at a rate of almost 4,000 new social networks each day.
Gina Trapani	Lifehacker	01-Jan-05	Gina Trapani is a technology blogger, book author, and programmer. The founding editor of Lifehacker.com, a daily weblog on software and personal productivity, Gina authored a book based on the web site which is in its second edition: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better!
Heather Armstrong	Dooce	01-Feb-01	One of the biggest mommy blogger’s out there attracting millions of readers to her blog and has recently passed 500,000 Twitter followers.
Juliette Brindak	Miss O and Friends	22-Jun-05	Juliette came up with the idea for Miss O and Friends at just 10 years old, now 19 her business is worth over $15 Million and is visited by millions of girls every month.
Justine Ezarik	iJustine	27-Jun-05	It all started with a 300 page iPhone bill, now she is a social media rock star with millions of YouTube views and over 500,000 twitter followers!
Kim Polese	SpikeSource	25-Jun-05	Kim Karin Polese is CEO of SpikeSource, and was one of the most prominent Silicon Valley executives during the dot-com era. In 1997, she made Time Magazine’s list of “The 25 Most Influential Americans”.
Lisa Stone	Blog Her	01-Feb-05	Lisa is the founder of BlogHer which reaches more than 14 million women monthly through its conferences, Internet site and publishing networks.
Lisa Sugar	Pop Sugar	April 2006	Lisa’s blog network is funded by Sequoia - the guys who funded Google and Youtube. Now one of the biggest celeb blogs on the net, Lisa sure is a top female blogger!
Louise Wannier	MyShape	26-Jun-05	Louise runs an online women’s apparel retailer that finds clothing for women based on their physical measurements and style and fit preferences
Maria Andros	Social Media Traffic Blueprint		Maria helps people create a buzz with social media. Recently she took 100 people into her mentoring program for $2500 each.
Meg Frost	Cute Overload	2005	Although she hasn’t got a pet herself, attracts 100,000s of visitors daily to her cute animal blog.
Meg Hourihan	Blogger.com	21-Jun-05	Meg Hourihan is the cofounder of Pyra Labs, the company that launched the Blogger personal blogging software that was acquired by Google for for a 8 figure deal.
Mena Trott	Six Apart	23-Jun-05	Mena is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad.
Michelle Malkin	Michelle Malkin	June 2004	Michelle blogs about news and politics which attracts nearly 200,000 visitors a day to her site.
Penelope Trunk	Brazen Careerist	March 2006	With multiple start-ups and over 30,000 RSS readers on her personal blog, Penelope is one female to follow.
Nancy J Price	she knows	1999	Nancy co-founded SheKnows which attracts 7.5 Million Monthly Unique Visitors and 76 Million Monthly Page Views!
Natalie Massenet	Net-A-Porter	22-Jun-05	Eight years ago she’d never even been on the internet. This year Natalie Massenet turned over £37 million with Net-a-Porter, the fashion website that has become a global phenomenon.
Rachna Kingston	Entheos	30-May-08	Is a pregnant work at home mum who runs a web design resource website that attracts over a million visitors a month!
Xeni Jardin	Boing Boing	22-Jun-05	Xeni is the editor of one of the top 5 blogs in the world, Boing Boing.

Threadless Millionaire

2009-05-07T15:16:00.002+08:00

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

Ready to Wear: A great business idea can come from life's basics--just ask Jacob DeHart and Jake Nickell. Every day, about 150 T-shirt designs from all corners of the world are submitted to their website. With designs ranging from political to comic to abstract, the artists behind them hope their creations will be selected as a favorite of the company's online community. Each day, members of the online community can cast their votes for the week's winning designs, which are put on T-shirts and made available for sale. Since the site launched six years ago, every design printed has sold out.

Village Voice: Understanding that uniting a community comes with responsibility, DeHart and Nickell regularly consult with their users for feedback and are careful to protect the integrity of the T-shirts. They've turned down offers from Target and Urban Outfitters, preferring to work with smaller vendors instead. Says Nickell, "We were just another product to put in their stores, and that's really not the way we view ourselves."

A Common Thread: With more than 500,000 registered users, Threadless.com is sizing up to be a powerful force. It just opened its first retail store in Chicago; launched Threadlesskids.com, a new children's clothing line; and has plans to expand distribution internationally and obtain partners in Europe. The site today is also just one of many communities under the partners' larger umbrella company, SkinnyCorp; other communities include Naked and Angry, which pursues the same idea on canvases like neckties and wallpaper, and 15 Megs of Fame, which puts the spotlight on undiscovered musicians.

Follow Their Lead: Give your customers a voice, and they just might use it to spread the word about your business

30 Websites That Make A Lot Of Money Online

2009-04-05T16:39:00.005+08:00

Google leads again for the 30 websites that make a lot of money!

Hi! I featured last week the 30 top blogs that makes a lot of money online. Now, I will feature the top 30 websites that makes a lot of money, not per day but per second. This site can earn more than a dollar per second without resting. Wow! I hope I can be one of them. This research is credit to Michael again! Tanx dude!

30 Websites That Make A Lot Of Money Online

Rank	Website	Founders	Annual Revenue	Per Second
1	Google	Larry Page and Sergey Brin	$21,800,000,000	$691.27
2	Amazon	Jeff Bezos	$19,166,000,000	$607.75
3	Yahoo	Jerry Yang and David Filo	$7,200,000,000	$228.31
4	eBay	Pierre Omidyar	$6,290,000,000	$199.45
5	MSN/Live	Nathan Myhrvold.	$3,214,000,000	$101.92
6	PayPal	Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek,	$2,250,000,000	$71.35
7	iTunes	Jeff Robbin	$1,900,000,000	$60.25
8	Reuters	Marshal Vace	$1,892,000,000	$59.99
9	Priceline	Jesse Fink	$1,884,000,000	$59.74
10	Expedia	Added Mark Schroeder	$1,447,000,000	$45.88
11	NetFlix	Reed Hastings	$1,200,000,000	$38.05
12	Travelocity	Terry Jones	$1,100,000,000	$34.88
13	Zappos	Nick Swinmurn	$1,000,000,000	$31.71
14	Hotels.com	David Litman	$1,000,000,000	$31.71
15	AOL	Erik Prince	$968,000,000	$30.70
16	Orbitz	Jeff Katz	$870,000,000	$27.59
17	Overstock	Robert Brazell	$834,000,000	$26.45
18	MySpace	Tom Anderson	$800,000,000	$25.37
19	Skype	Niklas Zennstrom	$550,841,000	$17.47
20	Sohu	Zhang Chaoyang	$429,000,000	$13.60
21	Buy.com	Robb Brock	$400,000,000	$12.68
22	StubHub	Eric Baker	$400,000,000	$12.68
23	Alibaba	Jack Ma	$316,000,000	$10.02
24	Facebook	Mark Zuckerberg	$300,000,000	$9.51
25	YouTube	Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim,	$300,000,000	$9.51
26	Blue Nile	Mark Vadon	$295,000,000	$9.35
27	Tripadvisor	Stephen Kaufer	$260,000,000	$8.24
28	Getty Images	Mark Getty	$233,200,000	$7.39
29	Bidz	Garry Itkin	$207,000,000	$6.56
30	NYTimes	Henry Jarvis Raymond	$175,000,000	$5.55

To the success of Internet Entrepreneurs! We love you!

30 Blog’s That Make A Lot Of Money Online

2009-03-22T14:38:00.004+08:00

To my readers, as I made a lot of data gathering on the web for Internet Millionaires, the challenge of presenting it to you is my difficulty. But don’t worry, I’m trying to construct a good story soon that will continue to inspire you. For now, I will give you a list of 30 Blog’s that really make big money in the Internet Industry. This is a research of Michael Dunlop who I’m a fan of also.

Feast this and enjoy. There are maybe 1000 more of this which needs proof. Anyway, please leave a comment if you know some sites and or love this post. Thank much!

Rank	Website	Owner	Monthly Earnings	Main Income
1	Techcrunch	Michael Arrington	$200,000	Advertising Banners
2	Mashable	Pete Cashmore	$180,000	Advertising Banners
3	Perez Hilton	Mario Lavandeira	$140,000	Advertising Banners
4	Gothamist	Jake Dobkin	$80,000	Pay Per Click
5	Timothy Sykes	Timothy Sykes	$80,000	Affiliate Sales
6	Venture Beat	Matt Marshall	$62,000	Pay Per Click
7	Life Hacker	Nick Denton	$60,000	Advertising Banners
8	Tuts Plus	Collis Taeed	$55,000	Advertising Banners
9	Smashing Magazine	Vitaly Friedman	$50,000	Advertising Banners
10	Steve Pavlina	Steve Pavlina	$45,000	Pay Per Click
11	TPM	Josh Marshall	$45,000	Pay Per Click
12	Car Advice	Alborz Fallah	$42,000	Advertising Banners
13	JohnChow	John Chow	$35,000	Affiliate Sales
14	Kotaku	Nick Denton	$32,000	Advertising Banners
15	Coolest Gadgets	Allan Carlton	$30,000	Advertising Banners
16	Problogger	Darren Rowse	$25,000	Advertising Banners
17	Joystiq	AOL	$18,000	CPM Advertising
18	PC Mech	David Risley	$16,000	Affiliate Sales
19	Shoemoney	Jeremy Schoemaker	$12,000	Private Advertising
20	Informasi Dan Tips	Mustofa Alaydrus	$9,500	Pay Per Click
21	Sizlopedia	Saad Hamid	$9,000	Pay Per Click
22	Retire at 21	Michael Dunlop	$5,000	Affiliate Sales
23	Noupe	Noupe	$4,930	Advertising Banners
24	Uber Affiliate	Paul Bourque	$4,500	Second Tear Affiliates
25	Abduzeedo	Fabio Sasso	$3,920	Advertising Banners
26	Click For Nick	Nick Skeba	$3,900	Pay Per Click
27	Tyler Cruz	Tyler Cruz	$3,200	Advertising Banners
28	Just Creative Design	Jacob Cass	$3,000	Services
29	Sizzled Core	Haris Nadeem	$3,000	Pay Per Click
30	Filmonic	Liam Goodwin	$2,200	CPM Advertising

Stanley Tang - A Teen Entrepreneur's Journey To Internet Success

2009-03-15T17:55:00.007+08:00

ABOUT

My name is Stanley Tang and I’m a 16-year-old entrepreneur, best-selling author and student from Hong Kong. I am not a millionaire yet but I do make a comfortable income online for a teenager through things like information marketing, affiliate marketing and social media.

My Story

I had a computer since I was 3 years old (back then they were still Macs) and got involved with the internet in 2001 when a friend of mine introduced me to web design (HTML, javascript - there were no such thing as CSS or blogging). So I started building websites for myself and my friends as a side hobby and hosted them on free hosting servers like Angelfire and Geocities.

A few years gone past and one day I was at my local bookstore where I picked up the book that will ultimately changed the course of my teenage life. It was called Rich Dad Poor Dad. It was then when I was first exposed to the concept of money, business, assets, cashflow, leverage. In fact, I loved it so much that I bought the entire Rich Dad Series. I also went on the internet to get more information and download interviews, PDF reports etc relating to the lessons taught in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Unknowinly, I also signed up to dozens of email mailing lists… Then on May 13th 2006, I received a “spam” email that introduced me to the concept of Google Adsense. And it was then when I realized the potential of making money from the internet. So I created a couple of free blogspot sites, wrote some articles and slapped a couple of Adsense ads on it.

By July 2006, I’ve made my first $100 and first $1000 by January 2007. In my first proper year online, (between January 2007 and December 2007) my “business” generated over 5-figures in sales (not bad for a 14 year old). And currently it’s on track to do 6-figures by the end of 2008. In December 2008, I released my new paperback book, eMillions: Behind-The-Scenes Stories of 14 Successful Internet Millionaires, which was an instant #1 best-seller on Amazon. This makes me the youngest best-selling business author in the world. In fact, I got featured by RetireAt21.com.

EBook: eMillions

"Could A 16-Year-Old Teenager
Get 14 Of The World's Most
Successful Marketers To
Agree To All His Wishes?"

I guess the answer is yes, because I was able to complete these interviews with flying colors... and get a New York Publisher to publish this best-selling book!

Not bad for a teenager huh?

But look, books are great. You can sit down in the park or anywhere and read this book for yourself. You can read it in bed before you go to sleep and I guarantee you, you will love every single page!

As you turn the pages of this best selling book, you'll quickly realize your decision to Buy It could rank as one of the very best financial decisions you've ever made, period!

After all, you are a motivated Internet Marketer and this book is the poster child for all things "online marketing!"

You get to extract the wisdom and insights from these stars and use those methods quickly to get the results you deserve!

Anthony Robbins is right too, because there's no better way to get to the top, than to model those already there!

This is your chance to do the exact same thing! And, I welcome you to grab this book right now!

This guy claims he is not yet a millionaire but based on his performance, just compute.

Asian-Filipino Millionaire: Ian Del Carmen

2009-03-10T13:12:00.008+08:00

Rags to Riches internet business success story.

The internet has spawned its fair share of millionaires, and Ian Del Carmen, CEO of Fireball Planet (http://www.fireballplanet.com) can count himself amongst the rank of success stories. Ian learnt early on how to make money online and work from home and is now a bona fide internet business success!

From a broken family, Ian’s mother had to work as a street vendor just to buy him milk while they lived with his grandparents – moving on one occasion to avoid a typhoon! Ian was a dedicated student and studied hard to make the honor rolls, as he knew the value a good education would bring him later in life.

Ian’s first brush with a computer had him in awe as he asked a good friend “how the texts on the monitor got printed” as he thought bond paper had been held so close to a screen until the words got transferred there. This still embarrasses Ian until this day.

Ian worked hard to pay his own way through college, starting out at the local McDonalds restaurant, then branching out on his own into network marketing. Building up his skills and confidence, he had a limited success at starting his own line of clothing, however that was short lived due to a lack of working capital. Ian even worked as an actor for $4 per hour, which sparked his enthusiasm for writing for which he was paid handsomely at the time.

Life was progressing for Ian, and he was soon married to his lively wife Iza, and they had a baby boy Ruiz Christian together. After selling Caesar’s pizza coupons to supplement his scriptwriting wage, Ian landed one of only 40 spots in a nation-wide search for new TV writers. After training in the US, and being signed up by one of the networks, Ian’s biggest break came when he was asked to write, direct, and produce different segments for the local version of the reality show ’Big Brother’ where he was paid more than $600 a month as a writer-slash-segment director. At that time, $600 a month was enough for him and his family and he could afford to buy a big can of milk for his kid.

It was during his spare time when not writing for the networks that Ian would surf the net in the local internet café and discovered the ebook phenomenon. He realized he could package his own writing digitally and sell it online for a profit. Ian soon fell in love with Adobe.

With a new found enthusiasm, Ian bought a second-hand PC and started investing all his spare funds into duplicating his ebooks onto CDs for distribution in stores all around Manila. However, they were not the best sellers he had hoped for. The problem was the cost of duplication and distribution, and the fact that his market was limited. Ian applied himself to studying how the American’s distributed their ebooks, and soon realized that digital delivery was the way to go. So once an affordable internet connection became available, Ian signed up, got a free hosting account and listed his ebooks online.

It was around this time that Ian found out about resell rights, so he got an ebook package and used this to build his first email list. Once Paypal became available in the Philippines, Ian repackaged all his ebooks and priced them at $27 and made his first sale! With the future in sight and his aim to sell one $27 product a day, Ian registered www.IanDelCarmen.com to start branding himself online and stand out from the crowd.

Ian also learnt about affiliate marketing and membership sites. With his passion for mobile technology, he created his very first membership site supplying ebooks that are read on mobile devices. MobileEbooks.net was born. Subsequently, Ian launched over 20 membership sites and was then able to afford his very own laptop worth nearly $3000!

With his workload increasing at a greater rate than ever, Ian decided to hire a virtual assistant to help out. One night, a huge idea hit him. He thought of packaging all his 20+ membership sites to sell with resell rights. Merging two profitable business models, Ian had a feeling it would be a blast! This could be his first big ticket venture. Ian planned to sell the package for $197 to $297 per license.

The next day, he followed his gut feeling. He thought the big idea should be released as soon as possible. He started setting up everything that he would need and got the domain name MembershipWholesaler.com which was luckily available. There was no one doing what Ian had in mind at that time! Wholesaling membership sites were not yet saturated in the marketplace!

Being online for less than a year, Ian had managed to gain friends from the Internet business industry. So when he launched MembershipWholesaler.com, he had some affiliates who helped in getting the word out to the online buyers for 50% commissions.

In less than a week after the launch, the project was approaching the five figure mark. Ian had earned about $20,000! That’s ONE MILLION in Philippine pesos!

In less than a year, Ian had become an Internet millionaire!
Being sick and tired of forking out for cab fares all the time, Ian inquired from his bank how he could get an auto loan. There were a lot of requirements. So he decided to just get a Toyota Forunner and paid P1.4 Million or about $22,000.

Indeed… life is now good for Ian!

As Ian continued running his virtual empire, he thought he should formalize the business as a separate entity. Together with some friends and his wife, Ian established Fireball Planet Corporation and it was incorporated in May 2007.

As of this time of writing, Ian has lost count of how many websites he is running. The main site became FireballPlanet.com and some of his major sites include FireballBooks.com, FireballSoftware.com, FireballMultimedia.com, and his flagship membership sites FireballInternetMarketing.com and MembershipWholesaler.com. With almost 20 employees and more than 50,000 regular clients worldwide, FireballPlanet.com branches out in Singapore and China in April 2008 and has immediate plans to open in India, Canada, Australia, and Indonesia. Fireball planet is a true internet business success. Ian has also started venturing into outsourcing services to give jobs to talented Filipinos so they can make money online and work from home. Brace yourself for some more success stories and home business stories.

And this… is only the beginning…

Quoted from Ian Del Carmen;

Difficulty:
“Most people think that the Philippines is a place where a lot of scams take place online, so I had to overcome that by building good relationships with my clients.”

Opportunity:
“People go to the net to surf for whatever information they may need or look for certain talent or skills that they can use. If you can offer that, why not sell it online?”

Good advise from a man who struck gold in the virtual landscape.

Sources: WiredNews

Millionaire Blogger: John Chow

2009-03-04T12:50:00.005+08:00

“My World! My Rules!”

About John Chow

A little somethinig about me. My name is John Chow (as you no doubt notice from the domain name). I also go by the nick name “Moto”, named after the old video game Moto Racer. I live in Vancouver, Canada pretty much all my life. Before discovering the internet, I was a partner in a local Richmond printing company. After over a decade of running a print shop, I decided it was time for a change, and the internet was where I was going to stake my claim.

On April 1999, I started a little technology site call The TechZone. That site has risen to become one of the largest hardware tech sites on the net. Currently the site has over 10,000 pages and gets over 200,000 page views per day.

Besides taking care of the day to day business at The Tech Zone, I can be seen riding my bike around Vancouver, working out at Fitness World or climbing Grouse Mountain. I am best known for his famous quote “My World! My Rules!” and “Oh well.”

Online ventures:

John Chow started with TheTechZone, in 1999 —”a major resource for hardware news and reviews.” Later on, he created TTZ Media Network, which provides a shopping and price comparison engine for technology-focused web publishers, with over 250,000 page views per month. It’s his main source of income.

Make Money Online: At, John Chow dot Com, he writes articles on how to make money online, along with variety of content on food, travel, and cars. His website is full of articles of “how you can monetize your website, increase traffic, and build an online business.”

John Chow dot Com is currently PR6 with Google, and receives 300,000 page views/month. Back in December, 2006 —John Chow started a very aggressive link back campaign, in which he would give a link back for every review of his blog when the text anchor ‘make money online‘ was used. Which proved to be a huge success, John now has over 870 links from various sites as a direct result of this campaign.

This has proved to be very successful for John not only his getting huge link, but also, since the inception of link campaign his blog income has grown from $2790.05 in December, 2006 to $12,569.61 in June, 2007, an increase in revenue of $9,779.56.

Link campaigns haven’t attributed completely to the growth in links, and revenue, but in advertising also. In the below image, you can see the difference.

Source of income: While many bloggers generate most of the income from Google AdSense. John Chow dot Com, get only about 6% (about $800) of the total income of Johnchow.com from AdSense. The largest increase came from ReviewMe ($3,800 for June), because the cost for a review from John has gone up from $100 to $400.

John Chow dot Com has has about 10 income sources. Some of these sources are Text-Link-Ads, Kontera, ReviewMe!, AdSense, and affiliate sales. So, you see, diversification is an important concept on his blog.

The aggressive tactics which have resulted in such high links, and revenue growth have come to him at a high price. It seems that Google is punishing John down and has dropped him to the 51st result for the term “John Chow”. Technorati has listed John as number 55 of the top 100 blogs indexed, if you look at the top 100 page there is no mention of him at all.

More importantly, John Chow is very generous with his readers. For e.g., he set up a deal with Kontera to allow small-time publishers into their advertising program, which normally has a high traffic requirements. He frequently gives away stuff he gets for free, like video cards, Zunes etc. in exchange for links to him.

John Chow dot Com is a must-read for anyone interested in monetizing a blog or other website, or just generally interested in how SEO techniques work. While many SEO e-books require you to pay, his is totally free.

John Chow is Now a Multi-Millionaire

So, John Chow is on his permanent vacation. I just hope that it’s not an RIP vacation (just kidding).

This vacation is actually the result when John Chow finally sold his “TTZ” company. He didn’t disclosed the amount of sale but I think it’s multi-million, if not billions based on his statement:

Sarah and I plan to spend the next year traveling the world. This is the final realization of a dream. Truth of the matter is, I never expected this day would come so soon. I remember the first time I received a multi-million dollar offer for TTZ. It was during the Dot Com boom days and I said no. Six months later, the Internet crashed. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat them. I do not intend to repeat the same mistake by saying no this time around. (emphasis mine)

That multi-million offer was actually happened before which according to him he’s carrying his regret after rejecting the offer. So since he bit the offer for his TTZ now, it obviously means it’s again another multi-million offer if not billions.

Additional: (As of May 2008 Data)
John Chow dot Com now makes over $30k / month on the blog alone!

Sources: johnchow.com, ditii.com, selaplana.com

The Million Dollar Homepage: Alex Tew

2009-03-03T09:05:00.005+08:00

The Million Dollar Homepage

MillionDollarHomepage.com Networth: $3 Million
Founder: Alex Tew
Age: 22

It took a 21-year-old a few minutes to come up with an idea which has made him more than one million dollars in four months. So what's his secret?

It started with a blank notepad, an overdraft and a shortage of socks.

Now it's a million-dollar business.

Last August, as a three-year degree loomed, Alex Tew lay on his bed in his family home in Cricklade, Wiltshire. It was time for his nightly brainstorming session.

This time, the problem was his finances. He already had an overdraft, which was sure to multiply at university, and he felt his poverty was reflected by his lack of decent, or matching, socks.

The first thing he wrote in his pad was "How can I become a millionaire?" Twenty minutes later, the Million Dollar Homepage idea was born.

It was selling pixels, the dots which make up a computer screen, as advertising space, costing a dollar per dot. The minimum purchase was $100 for a 10x10 pixel square to hold the buyer's logo or design. Clicking on that space takes readers to the buyer's website.

With $999,000 banked so far, Alex recalls his thought process at the time. He says: "I wrote the title to spark the creativity and then wrote down the attributes the idea needed. It had to be simple to set up and understand.

Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an Internet phenomenon. The Alexa ranking of web traffic peaked at around 127; as of 18 February 2009 (2009 -02-18), it is 42,735. On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross income.

Sources: BBC News, Wikipedia.org

Meebo Millionaires: Seth Sternberg, Sandy Jen, and Elaine Wherry

2009-03-02T12:53:00.003+08:00

Meebo an Internet Millionaire Story

Meebo.com Networth: $3.5 Million
Founders: Seth Sternberg, Sandy Jen, and Elaine Wherry
Age: 30,29 and 27

"When we put it out we did not know if anyone would like it; we just knew that it solved our problem," explains Seth Sternberg, 28, chief executive and co-founder of Meebo.com.

The "it" in question is Meebo, a web-based instant messaging (IM) system which lets users send and receive messages from a number of different IM services, such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Jabber.

It is an elegant solution to the problem of having multiple accounts - many of which are not interoperable - and requiring different software downloads.

Community built

Mr Sternberg is not concerned that Meebo could be rendered obsolete if the big IM firms decided to work together and end interoperability issues.

"Yahoo and Microsoft have already made their IM network interoperable - we saw no impact.

"Meebo is a service but it has a community built around it. It is available in 59 different languages and our users did all that translating. The users felt so passionately about the product."

While he jokes about one day setting up a Meebo airline, Mr Sternberg says the priority remains to roll out essential features and to take advantage of the growing power and flexibility of the web to deliver new services.

"There are very, very few limitations to the types of software that can be run as web applications.

"Microsoft and Adobe are working on technology that will completely blur the line between whether an application comes over the web or is on the desktop."

But does he ever wish he was sitting in a cubicle at IBM, worrying about other people's budgets?

"Definitely not. When it's your own project, you are passionate about it all the time."

Sources: BBC News, http://www.playandsearch.com

Top 20 Young Entrepreneurs Under 30

2009-02-28T14:07:00.005+08:00

Mark Zuckerberg

Do you know that the internet is the greatest monetary equalizer? You don’t have to be an old tech savvy, computer geek, seo specialist, first-world-straight-As genius just to be rich online. As long as you have a reliable computer, internet connection and a brilliant idea; even young kids can retire young and rich!

Check out this list of young internet millionaires under 30.

1. Mark Zuckerberg [ Facebook ] 23 years old | $700M
2. Andrew Gower [ Runescape ] 28 years old | $650M
3. Blake Ross and David Hyatt [ Mozilla ] 22 years old | $120M
4. Chad Hurley [ Youtube ] 30 years old | $85M
5. Angelo Sotira [ Deviant ART ] 26 years old | $75M
6. John Vechey [ PopCap Games ] 28 years old | $60M
7. Alexander Levin [ WordPress ] 23 years old | $57M
8. Jake Nickell [ Threadless ] 28 years old | $50M
9. Sean Belnick [ Biz Chair ] 20 years old | $42M
10. Kevin Rose [ Digg ] 30 years old | $31M
11. Ryan Block [ Engadget ] 25 years old | $20M
12. Aodhan Cullen [ Stat Counter ] 24 years old | $18M
13. Tom Fulp [ Newgrounds ] 29 years old | $15M
14. Rishi Kacker and Matt Pauker [ Voltage ] 24 years old | $12M
15. Markus Frind [ Plenty of Fish ] 29 years old | $10M
16. Catherine and David Cook [ My Year Book ] 17 & 19 years old | $10M
17. Fredrik Neij [ The Pirate Bay ] 28 years old | $10M
18. David Hauser & Siamak Taghaddos [ GotvMail ] 24 years old | $8M
19. Jermaine Griggs [ Hear and Play ] 23 years old | $5M
20. Jay Westerdal [ Domain Tools ] 29 years old | $5M

Their each stories soon shall be featured in our blog. For now, just a list. Enjoy and have fun with this young and rich internet millionaires.

Sources: http://www.retireat21.com

Ashley Qualls and WhateverLife.com: Case Study of a Teenage Millionaire

2009-02-26T16:07:00.003+08:00

Her numbers are indeed impressive. 17 years old high school dropout. Made more than $1 million. Earns as much as $70K a month. Owns a website that attracts more than 7 million monthly visitors and 60 million page views.
Her first Adsense paycheck was $2,790 and she has already rejected a $1.5 million buyout offer. I’m referring to Ashley Qualls, the founder of Whateverlife.com, a free MySpace layouts website.

Fastcompany recently published a fascinating feature article on Ashley, a teenage entrepreneur from Detroit who has made a substantial amount of money online by targeting a niche market (girls on Myspace/social networks) and fulfilling their needs.

Ashley is evidence of the meritocracy on the Internet that allows even companies run by neophyte entrepreneurs to compete, regardless of funding, location, size, or experience–and she’s a reminder that ingenuity is ageless.

She has taken in more than $1 million, thanks to a now-familiar Web-friendly business model. Her MySpace page layouts are available for the bargain price of…nothing. They’re free for the taking. Her only significant source of revenue so far is advertising.

Inspirational, no doubt. And a clear example of the massive potential that the web has when it comes to generating substantial and consistent income. The amount of money she currently earns would be difficult to replicate offline, although what is really important here is that her online income is very scalable.

What she is currently earning can be exponentially increased through the development of business models which make use of her influence within the specific demographic. In this article I’ll take a quick look at her website and offer some general suggestions on how she can improve her income and reach.

Monetization Strategies: How Whateverlife.com Can Make More Money

Like other high traffic websites, Whateverlife.com runs CPM ads by Casale Media and Value Click, alongside Google Adsense and Nabbr, a revenue sharing video widget. The integration for each ad type is relatively well done and not too intrusive. The main problem is that Ashley doesn’t seem to be selling ads directly, which is a huge loss considering the amount of traffic she gets.

Currently, a site like Techcrunch makes $10K per 125 x 125 ad block and that’s with 4.0 million page views per month. Whateverlife gets 15 times more pageviews and I’m sure an aggressive direct ad campaign will bring in at least $10K more per month, even after one takes into account the variance between technology and lifestyle/teens-oriented advertisers.

According to the article, Whateverlife.com has a larger audience than the combined circulation of magazines like Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and CosmoGirl!. This is something remarkable, that should be taken advantage of in full.

I would suggest contacting these magazine owners and many other similar businesses which share the same demographic to pitch ad space on your site. I’m quite sure many of them would be interested. It’s also important to set up a simple Advertise page in order to better accommodate potential advertisers.

Affiliate Programs. Establishing affiliate arrangements with products or brands Ashley already uses or supports is also an excellent way to make some extra income through personal recommendations. Even generic web hosting affiliate programs or other non-specific items would generate some income, because of the sheer amount of traffic.
Donations. They work best when combined with a free service and I think she should put up a simple Paypal badge or customized icon for those who might want to make donations. Even if most visitors are teens, some do have access to online money accounts and can offer appreciation in the form of money.
Premium Services. Instead of producing layouts en masse for free, Ashley could offer premium design services for corporate clients, businesses or individuals who want a highly customized and specific design. In essence, brand Whateverlife.com as a design community which understands the teenage demographic. She already has a number of employees working for her and their output can be partially directed towards premium services instead of free content.

Personal Branding. One of the ways to make more money from any website without increasing traffic or reach is to leverage the exposure the website generates to build your personal brand. Depending on her interests, Ashley could participate in conferences as a paid speaker on specific topics or hold workshops or classes for aspiring young entrepreneurs/designers.

Pushing the personal brand gives you the ability to delve into parallel or adjacent industries that might require your services or skills.

Apart from these monetization strategies, I do like how Ashley is aiming for the mobile market by launching $0.99 to $1.99 cell phone wallpaper downloads in September. This will be a big step forward and will provide some much needed diversification: Currently Adsense is responsible for 60% of her total revenue.

Entrepreneurial Strategy: How to Branch Out for Greater Income and Reach

I like the fact that Ashley has branched out into a magazine, a shop and has set up a forum. It’s important to direct the attention you receive elsewhere, particularly into areas which will spread your brand. Let’s say a visitor arrives at Whateverlife.com and downloads a free layout. Do you want her to click off and visit another website?

Or would you rather have her sign up as a community member in your forum or subscribe to your newsletter? Never assume that a visitor will come back once they visit your website. Some will but others do not and your greatest chance of building an audience is to encourage recurrence and loyalty.

1. Build Sticky Communities. A community is a great way to do this. Create your own social network and learn to cross-market your existing sites. Don’t think that a search engine visitor will know of your other websites if you don’t tell them about it.

Connect the dots for them. Each of your websites or projects should increase size or reputation of another, if they are just simply feeding off traffic from one another, you are doing something wrong.

2. Create Multiple Niche Sites. Another good strategy would be to develop multiple niche sites off the same domain, each offering a specific bait. Unless you have a link building strategy at hand, it is better to put most projects on a single domain because you are leveraging the trust that search engines has already given you.

If you create multiple new sites on different domain names, be sure that you know how to build links and an audience that will help you develop authority and the ability to rank, particularly if you are in a competitive niche market.

Examples of niche areas to explore include a teens marketplace, a classifieds section, niche Yahoo Answers clone, social video community, a teens social news/voting site, wallpapers and entertainment fields like celebrities etc.

Reinvesting Income into Your Business is Important

Fastcompany reports that Ashley doesn’t do any paid advertising of any sort. I’m not sure how she reinvests her income into Whateverlife but I do think that some of it should definitely go back into the promotion of her online empire.

Such a substantial monthly income ($70K) will allow you to play around with various paid advertising programs, particularly for your business models or spinoff websites which are not prominent in their niche. Her lifestyle magazine is an example of a site that could do with more promotion outside of the design/layout crowd.

Apply these Strategies for Your Own Ventures

Hopefully some of what I’ve written will be applicable to your own online business or websites. Let this case study remind you that it is indeed possible to make lots of money through the simple act of building of websites that work.

I particularly like how Ashley quit high school and took classes online to concentrate on her business because it shows her passion and her determination for success. She knows that she has a golden goose and did the right thing by devoting full attention to it. Never be afraid to quit your day job when you have a real money maker that has potential.

Don’t despair if you aren’t making money now. Research your market, consult with those more experienced, learn the business and be strategic to achieve your goals. Want more inspiration? Here are profiles of some other money making websites.

For more case studies and tips how to build a profitable online business or website, do subscribe to Dosh Dosh’s RSS blog feed or sign up for free email updates.

Sources: http://www.doshdosh.com/case-study-of-teenage-millionaire-ashley-qualls/