About a week. Back in January 2004 I bought a domain, a design template and set up a copy of the free osCommerce shopping cart. I created packages of advertising services, put them in the store, then started posting on webmaster forums with advertising sections, and participating in the forums with the site in my signature. Total time from idea to working website was two days.
I got 5 orders the first day, a couple the next, a few more the next day, then I started advertising on search engines. Sales exploded. Over $100,000 by the end of the year... which is a lot of $10 sales!
I was simply buying up different types of ad space at wholesale rates from various networks/services, then packaging it in smaller chunks for individual site owners in the $10-40 range. The site paid for itself in its first week. A few years later and net profit, rather than revenue, was past six figures as well.
I'm not so much in that business anymore, but it was my first entrepreneurial endeavor beyond slapping ads on articles I'd written, so I was proud of that success. I later replicated the story several times with products that were income-you-could-live-on-full-time from the day the websites went live.
I really need to do it again, too. I've since sold off those businesses to pay for two college degrees, then for a new car and downpayment on a home... while my current freemium+premium services bring in enough to cover the mortgage, I need to get back into product building to get some money in the bank again.
First month = $495 in expenses. $20 for my first month webhosting. $99 for Dreamweaver (I was still hand-coding HTML). $375 for that damn Verisign SSL certificate.
First month I made $300, so was a little in the red. Second month I made $700 and was profitable ever since.
First 10 musicians were just people I knew. After that were friends-of-friends since the first 10 were so happy with my service. Then some people started mentioning it in their newsletters, and more strangers kept signing up.
That whole first year, the site did almost nothing. I didn't even know PHP+MySQL at the time, so it was just a hand-coded HTML site that let you put a CD in a shopping cart, and enter your payment info. Whatever you entered was emailed to me, and I'd copy it by hand into my merchant account to charge their card, then copy it by hand into a label printer to mail their order, then copy it by hand into Eudora to email them a thank-you email.
Though this was 1998, yes I think the same approach applies today.
Fair enough. I was only 11 in 1998 so I don't have any idea what the fraud/security situation was like (and should have thought about that before posting criticism). I'm sure CD Baby made the transition to more secure methods as soon as it was more apparent that sending CC information via email was a bad idea.
I was just surprised to see that, since it's such a well known Bad Thing now.
Absolutely. The concept of coming up with something to sell (or resell), setting up a barebones store, doing some test advertising and seeing results in just a few days is timeless. It's even easier today than in the past since creating a good looking ecommerce site is easier than ever with all the store builders and payment services available.
If you've ever seen Tim Ferris's book "The Four-Hour Workweek", he suggests that exact system, except without accepting payment and without having the product available yet, so that if people do try to order from you, you've validated that there's a product-market fit before investing time and money into an elaborate website, stocking inventory, etc.
I got 5 orders the first day, a couple the next, a few more the next day, then I started advertising on search engines. Sales exploded. Over $100,000 by the end of the year... which is a lot of $10 sales!
I was simply buying up different types of ad space at wholesale rates from various networks/services, then packaging it in smaller chunks for individual site owners in the $10-40 range. The site paid for itself in its first week. A few years later and net profit, rather than revenue, was past six figures as well.
I'm not so much in that business anymore, but it was my first entrepreneurial endeavor beyond slapping ads on articles I'd written, so I was proud of that success. I later replicated the story several times with products that were income-you-could-live-on-full-time from the day the websites went live.
I really need to do it again, too. I've since sold off those businesses to pay for two college degrees, then for a new car and downpayment on a home... while my current freemium+premium services bring in enough to cover the mortgage, I need to get back into product building to get some money in the bank again.