Has anyone started a successful web business?

homeOwner

Reading on the boards you see alot of posts about people starting up web businesses, hey I am even in the starting stages of one myself.

The holy grail for me would be that it becomes viable to give up the day job in 5 years and work from home at the web business. I am setting myself that target.

Just wondering if anyone has some feel-good or success stories they can share about their own web business.

mneylon

We're a successful business

fintan

I run a number of succesful companies.

SouperComputer

prés tell [sp] what specificaly you mean by a web business?

Shop?
Website design?
Website hosting?
PrOn?

homeOwner

SouperComputer wrote:

prés tell [sp] what specificaly you mean by a web business?

Shop?
Website design?
Website hosting?
PrOn?

Any of the above Any business that you do not have a premises for and you generate business from your website, ie you dont have a shop of an office in a business park....you are 100% working from home.

Just interested to hear how people got on, their struggles, their little victories....something to give me hope.

paulocon

Hi,

Don't know what your business plan is but it's good to see you have given yourself a realistic time-period to grow the business. For me, a lot of people fail in that they expect to be turning a healthy profit after only 6 months or a year and loose interest when this doesn't happen - 5 years is way more realistic.

My advice is to build slowly and stick with it.....

stepbar

You need to give us an indication of the tryp of business you are in, I think its more advice you need. From the sounds of it your business doesnt seem to be doin well.

homeOwner

stepbar wrote:

You need to give us an indication of the tryp of business you are in, I think its more advice you need. From the sounds of it your business doesnt seem to be doin well.

Er....? Que?

Did you read the post? I am not looking for advice at all. And my business hasnt even started yet, so I dont understand you post at all.

mneylon

homeOwner wrote:

Any business that you do not have a premises for and you generate business from your website, ie you dont have a shop of an office in a business park....you are 100% working from home.

So you want to restrict yourself to micro business?

Peter McC

I'm in year two of my design business (web design, illustration, flash interactive and animation). I’m happy with my progress and things are going according to plan. I’m working to a rough five year plan.

I’m also developing a couple of side project ‘web’ enterprises. I’m applying my particular skill sets (design, illustration web development, SE) with free technology available (to everyone) on the web to test the waters.

This is pure experimental stuff and I expect a high failure rate. That said, I also expect some success and they will be the projects I’ll focus on and develop for sustainability.

Throw enough s**t at the wall and something is bound to stick!

http://www.mccormackdesigns.com

trap4

My brother has been involved in a niche international sport for 20 years and in 1998 I setup a basic website for him, one of the first for anyone in his particular industry. As such it earned alot of exposure.

Later that year I setup a Yahoo! Club (they were clubs back then) to go along with the site, to allow others in the industry discuss issues relevant to them. It grew very quickly and got mentioned in Irish, British and Australian newspapers.

In 1999 an American girl name Wendy setup a 'competitive' forum with a focus on American involvement in the industry. It too grew quickly but never quite caught up to the membership of our own forum.

As luck would have it Wendy was on a whistlestop tour of Ireland in late 2000 and she came by my brother's house for a short chat, about the business in general, not about the websites. However as I was there at the time he introduced me and we had a short cordial chat, no more than 3 or 4 minutes. That was the first and only time I met Wendy face to face.

Shortly after Wendy got back to the States we witnessed further fragmentation of 'the space' when New Zealanders, Australians, British and other Americans in the business setup more and more online forums for the industry. This fragmentation really wasn't doing anyone any favours so Wendy and myself agreed, over email, to amalgamate our two forums by building a new one at a dedicated domain.

6 years later and we're by far the biggest community website for people in our international niche sports industry. We incorporated (in Ireland) in 2003 and now provide a variety of services but our biggest revenue spinner is plain old subscriptions to our discussion forums. Classified and banner advertising and auctions also provide nice revenue streams.

At the moment this website is my full time business but the fact is it will never be more than a 'mom & pop shop', ie. a lifestyle business. That's fine for now as it gives me the flexibility and independence to pursue other internet based ideas. Indeed, I recently joined the advisory board of a Boston based Web 2.0 startup. I guess you could say that I see myself as a parallel entrepreneur :-)

Though my lifestyle now is more modest than when I stopped working for multinationals at the end of '99 I'm a much happier individual and would thoroughly recommend pursuing your dream if what you want is an 'independent digital lifestlye'.


-James.
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com