Many of us have heard of the dating website named, Plenty of Fish. A handful of you may have even read about the widespread claim that the site owner makes $5-$10 Million dollars per year simply from the ads he puts on the site.
Those results are not typical and a web entrepreneur would be well advised to avoid setting their revenue expectations anywhere close to that level. However, with the right site and plan, it is possible.
A site named Dosh Dosh has compiled a large list of comments taken from various interviews with the founder of Plenty of Fish. A lot of them are things you should indeed consider as you venture out on your own. In fact, you should consider them well beforehand!
Here are a few of the tips that I personally liked:
- You Don’t Need a Team. “It’s just me right now, my girlfriend helps with some of the customer service stuff when I don’t want to do it. I am planning on expanding into other markets but I don’t think I need to hire any employees any time soon. Nearly all the work can be automated away except for user stupidity that leads to crazy questions.”
- You Need to Have a Rigorous Work Ethic. “When I came home from work I sat down and I forced myself to code for a hour or 2. The enemy was thinking, whenever I paused or started to think I would force myself to type something, its amazing how much you can get done when you just type.
For that business its just a matter of repetition and fighting boredom. At the end of the day you just need to sit down and DO it. Most people don’t.”
- Success Doesn’t Happen, It’s Created. “Now I know most of the people reading this are aspiring to create a business of some kind. Many will just day dream all day but never actually do anything.
I was like that a few years ago, then I finally sat down and did something, and kept forcing myself to do it till it became a pattern and it turned out hugely successful.”
It’s a pretty good read for anyone with an interest in starting an online business and in some cases, a lot can also be applied to any business model. The remainder of the 17 tips can be found at Learn from an Adsense Millionaire: Notes on Markus Frind and PlentyofFish.com.