Back in 1998 or so I read a book that really shifted my thinking about small business and the Internet. Called Striking it Rich.com (now out of print), the book profiled 23 “incredibly successful websites you probably never heard of.”
One of those sites was AsktheBuilder.com.
The book profiled the site and its owner, the builder, Tim Carter. Tim is a nationally syndicated columnist and his website is a font of home improvement columns, videos, tips and help.
His is also your prototypical small business, with but one and a half employees. Yet not only has Tim been incredibly successful with his online business, he’s convinced anyone can have similar success.
When Tim started his site back in the mid-’90s, he sold ads manually — making phone calls and getting banner ads. But the advent of Google revolutionized his business. All of a sudden, instead of having to sell ads one at a time, he was able to sign up with Google AdSense and have Google populate his content with ads.
Google recently did a case study about AsktheBuilder. Here is what Google says:
“In April 2004, Carter learned about AdSense for content sites. He recognized that it would enable him to reach thousands of advertisers and screen ad quality with minimal time and effort. Carter immediately experienced a jump in advertising revenue of 400%. His monthly advertising revenues, including AdSense, grew from $1,500 to $7,500.”
Wow!
But it gets better. The case study concluded with the fact that AsktheBuilder soon began to make $1,400 a day in ad revenue, but according to Carter, that is now incorrect. Today it makes significantly more than that.
So how can we duplicate his success?
Read more.
Photo by AsktheBuilder.com.
Online Profits Aren’t Just For The Big Guys
April 29, 2008 by Rich | 2 Comments
In Bootstrap, Internet, Success
phreakaholic on April 29th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
thanks for the really nice article. i can start learning from this. :)
curt on April 30th, 2008 at 5:42 am
I love the article! Even though, I simply cannot imagine myself earning such a sums of money on-line (yet) reading such articles is very encouraging and motivational.
It is worthwhile to press ‘Read more’, button in the article, as well.