Successful Business Entrepreneurs
If you’re entirely satisfied to create a web venture that makes a small but welcome profit every month, it’s still inspiring to hear about ordinary people who have taken a simple idea and created a website potentially worth millions or even billions. There are plenty of success stories to motivate you.
- eBay – founded in September 1995, eBay is The World’s Online marketPlace, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. Launched in the UK in October 1999, eBay.co.uk has a global customer base of 233 million.
- Friends Reunited – the website that started out to reunite old school friends was started by Steve and Julie Pankhurst and Jason Porter from a bedroom office in 1999. Friends Reunited was acquired by ITV for $193m.
- Million Dollar Home Page – student Alex Tew needed to find a way of paying his way through university and created a simple advertising page where businesses could buy web-space measured in pixels. Within five months, and through some clever marketing. Alex sold all the space and is reputed to have earned more than a million dollars.
- Mumsnet.com – this popular website was set up in January 2000 by Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton. It has over 15 million visitors each month.
Discover Business Entrepreneurs – Just Like You!
There is multitude of web companies launching every day by ordinary people with entrepreneurial vision. Many of these websites are in their infancy; some are quietly generating a modest income for their founders while others are growing at an extraordinary rate.
Take a look at the following internet entrepreneurs – people just like you – who have ventured online to follow their dreams:
Jon Robins – Meanandgreen.com
Jon worked in offices for big companies for many years. Then in 2004 he decided to escape the rat-race and buy a little run-down army surplus store that wasn’t even on the web. Four years later and he has built a thriving online business that is now being run from separate offices and warehouse space. Jon’s company buy in bulk from around the world and send out a huge quantity of parcels each week!
Christine Lewandowski and Richard Evans – Singlewithkids.co.uk
Aimed at single parents, Chrissie and Richard’s web venture singlewithkids.co.uk provides a valuable service for many parents who spend their evenings at home alone while their kids are in bed. The emphasis is on mixing cyber support with real life contact – and the online venture is working famously. Realising that cash is a problem for a large percentage of the UK’s 1.9 million lone parents, they aim for low cost trips that bring a lot of single parents together (over 100 on a recent camping trip), and there are events all over the country every month. The club is funded by membership payments and also an online dating site and is growing rapidly in popularity due to a very large need.
Alison Berry – Theidealpresent.co.uk
In 2004 with 10 years experience in the toy industry, Alison Berry launched theidealpresent.co.uk – a free online gift advice service – to help people find the right presents for children aged 0-10. Alison’s objective in setting up the business was to use her skills and experiences, whilst having a career which genuinely fitted around family life and looking after her own children. With a real gift for choosing presents that children loved, theidealpresent.co.uk was born.
A few years on and theidealpresent.co.uk offers a great service, advising what to buy for children, and where to buy it – from 10,000 ideas from over 200 retailers. The web venture continues with critical acclaim from the BBC. Their Click programme described theidealpresent.co.uk a ‘great website’. The business model is one that provides an income stream with next to no overheads or running costs. A model that many other business could only dream of! As the largest publicly available database of toys and games in the UK, Alison is deserved proud of the venture’s success.
Paul Gunter and Andrew Shorten – BusinessMarketingBook.com
Friends and business partners Paul Gunter and Andrew Shorten have run their own web business (individually and combined) for several years, starting out when they were in their early 20s. With a passion for business and running ventures in internet marketing and domain name trading, they created an information products – domainprofitguide.com – which to date has generated over $50,000 in sales. Their web venture has been promoted using various internet marketing techniques, joint ventures with some of the UK’s top internet marketers and from speaking at entrepreneur conventions. The inspiring partnership has since written a book about online and offline marketing for business, which was published early 2009.
Kate Haines – GreenFinder.co.uk
Kate Haines is an ex-teacher who decided to set up a green pages style website called GreenFinder after a lifelong interest in eco living. Interest in the environment has grown tremendously in the last few years so when GreenFinder launched in 2006, the venture developed rapidly. As a passionate environmentalist Kate was keen to use her skills to communicate sustainability and to help inform the public on living a green lifestyle. Kate features over 150 green business clients on the website and a green showcase stall which stall which she takes to events. The website pro-motes everything green from cardboard coffins to eco wedding dresses and green cartoonists!
Elio Assuncao – Yodspica.com
Cardiff-based Yodspica.com specialises in infomation technology solutions and web design. The business was established by Elio Assuncao. Despite having excellent skills, Elio was at the time unemployed and decided to accept a Job Centre Plus incentive programme. He started Yodspica.com with no grant, no bank funding, no loans, no savings, and basically no money at all! Today, the company provides in advanced web design, research, IT, multimedia, graphic design engineering support, among others.
Now if you are feeling motivated to become an online entrepreneur, the next step is to think about the type of website or blog that you would like to begin. You may already have a clean concept mapped out. So what are you waiting for?