Asian-Filipino Millionaire: Ian Del Carmen

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

“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

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

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

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

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/