The Internet provides a level playing field and here are some examples of success

One man and his blog makes £20,000 a month!

JohnChow.com is a blog covering the miscellaneous ramblings of a dotcom mogul. John Chow launched the blog in 2005 as a way to express his opinions on really anything. It wasn’t until later that he began to experiment with monetizing the site. As John learned about blogging and monetizing he shared the information with his readers. Unlike most bloggers, he also posted how much his site was earning each month. These updates became more popular and popular as his blog’s revenue grew and grew. Some months he earns as much as $30,000.

By 18 Gurbaksh made £25 million and then built another business aged 25 selling for £200 million

BlueLithium is an advertising network that was launched in 2004 and lead by serial entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal. It grew into one of the largest networks by offering different solutions to internet advertising. Gurbaksh is 25 years old and has had previous success with another ad network called ClickAgents which he sold for $40 million at age 18. BlueLithium was acquired by Yahoo for $300 million in October 2007. Gurbaksh is continuing to develop new projects including a book.

Another blog to watch is run by Leo

Zenhabits is one of the top personal development blogs on the internet. Leo Babauta launched it in January 2007 and with lots of hard work it has grown to over 50,000 subscribers in about a year. Today it reaches hundreds of thousands of other internet surfers each month. Leo has also been able to turn Zenhabits into a full time job and has recently announced he is writing a book.

Dating makes money

Plentyoffish is one of the top dating sites on the internet and of those; it is one of the only free ones. It was launched in 2003 by Markus Frind as a project for him to learn how program with ASP.NET. Markus grew Plentyoffish from humble beginnings to a site that today makes around $10,000 a day or more. However, the greatest aspect of this success story is that Markus was the sole owner and employee just until recently.

Dating Direct is a UK story

Internet dating entrepreneur Darren Richards is a self-confessed ‘petrol head’ who can choose from some of the most expensive cars around when he needs to drive to a business meeting.

Richards, 42, made his fortune by starting the dating websiteDating Direct and then selling it to French company Meetic for £30 million in 2007. He has since set up and sold propertyindex.com, which has 56 employees and helps estate agents sell overseas properties. He travels frequently and divides his time between the UK and Tenerife, where he has properties and bars, and Cape Verde, where he also has properties.

We know this is just the tip of the iceberg and are seriously looking for open-minded teachable new Internet entrepreneurs

Here are some lessons to be learned from these internet properties:

- Find what you and other people need.
- Create something simple.
- Start small, but aim big.
- Know when to return to the drawing board for plan b.
- Be different.
- Don’t let competition stop you, let it motivate you.
- Also don’t forget to have fun with your project. You’re not going to be successful if your web venture is boring.