Success Stories

Owner: Ellen Ferlazzo
www.cheapcooking.com

Topic: How to save money on the meals you cook.

Ellen Ferlazzo started a website about ways to cook meals that don’t break the budget. It’s a very simple, basic website.

But … it’s chockfull of information people find valuable. She works on it in her spare time and adds a couple of new recipes to it each week. Visitor-wise it’s right up there in the top 1% of all websites.

“If you like to write and you have some subject that you’re passionate about, I think it’s a great way to both share your knowledge – try to create something useful to people that has good information – and get paid for it too,” she says.

In total, she has four sites in various stages of development. Lately she hasn’t had a lot of time to focus on her cooking website, but loves that it “still sits there and earns money.”

Owner: Lisa Irby
www.flat-stomach-exercises.com

Topic: Exercises and nutritional advice on how to keep your stomach fit and trim.

After trying different things to keep in shape, Lisa Irby became somewhat of an expert when it came to exercises to keep one’s stomach flat.

Lisa decided to start a website to help people who were battling the same problem she once had. She was surprised how quickly her site’s popularity grew as she did little to promote it.

“It pretty much runs on auto-pilot. It gets about 6,500 visitors a day and brings in four figures a month,” she says.

She makes her entire living online. In total, she has four websites that bring her in an income of “well into six figures.” She loves the freedom it gives her. And she loves that she can make a great income, “without ever talking to customers or shipping products.”

Owner: Donna Meyer
www.experience-san-miguel-de-allende.com

Topic: A place for people to experience the magic of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Donna Meyer loves every minute she spends working on her website. One reason is that it’s about a city where she once lived, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, that she says “touches her heart and stirs her soul.” Right now everything she has is tied up in a business in Arizona that’s currently for sale. When it sells, she plans to move back to San Miguel de Allende.

“I’m close to retirement age, as is my partner. Our social security checks are going to be miniscule, if they still exist at all,” she says.

A few years ago she started searching for a way to make money online. She wanted a business she could do from anywhere. She also wanted something that brought in passive income that she could leave alone for “days or weeks at a time and know it was still making money.”

“Now that I know what I’m doing, building a second site will be easy,” she says. In fact, she’s already started another website and plans to have at least four in total up and running in the not-too-distant future.

Owner: Shaun Fawcett
www.writinghelptools.com

Topic: “How-to” information and practical tools to assist you with your personal, business, or educational writing.

A number of years ago, Shaun Fawcett’s job with an international training company disappeared, when their largest customer – the government – pulled their funding.

Unemployed and wondering what to do, he decided to strike out on his own. For a couple of years, he consulted and did some copywriting. It wasn’t long before he started to research how he could make a living online.

He soon determined the best way was to build a content-rich, theme-based website. The niche he chose was practical writing help for the average person. Specifically helping people learn how to write college admission essays, resumes, recommendation letters, thank you letters, etc.

The number of visitors his website now attracts is nothing short of astounding. During the week on peak days it’s been getting over 15,000 unique visitors. Even better is the money he’s making from it. He’s bringing in over six figures a year, which Shaun says is more than he ever made when he worked as an executive.

Owner: Tomaz Mencinger
www.vacuumwizard.com

Topic: Reviews and ratings to help people find the best vacuum.

In November 2005 tennis coach Tomaz Mencinger started a site to about his passion, tennis. He loved that with a website he could share his ideas about tennis with thousands of people instead of just a few people on the tennis court each day.

In July 2006, he started another site, but this time it was not about tennis. It was about a subject that at the time he knew little about. He started a site about vacuums. Now just three years later, he’s making an incredible $400 a day from his vacuum site! One of his site pages brings him in affiliate income on sales of 3 to 5 vacuums a day.

His tennis site, which he says he hasn’t fully monetized yet and is more of a forum to exchange his ideas on tennis, brings him in about $3,000 a month.

Tomaz says “the freedom is unbelievable. I was working for tennis clubs and academies for maybe 10 years. Sometimes I had to go to work and work with people who I didn’t like to work with. Now I chose who I want to work with, when I want to work and how much I want to work.”

On a typical day he might go to movie, play a bit of tennis and then later come home and write an article.

“I work 3 to 4 hours per day. It’s not like I have to work. I don’t have to work 5 minutes if I don’t want to, I just work because I like to,” he says.

Owner: Sara Ding
www.juicing-for-health.com

Topic: Information about healthy fresh fruit and vegetable juices.

Sara Ding, who lives in Malaysia, was feeling run down and tired all the time. She was only in her early 30’s. Her doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her, so she went home and did some research on her own. She determined that had a condition called Toxemia. Toxemia is a poisoning of the blood which results from the excessive accumulation of toxins that result from poor food choices.

She knew she had to change her lifestyle. After doing some more research she learned that “juicing” was the best way to get nutrients into her body fast and effectively. So she set out to learn as much as she could about juicing. . In 2005 in her spare time, she started a website about various aspects and benefit of juicing. She soon became an expert on it.

She now makes over $2,000 USD per month in Google Ad sense revenues alone. She also makes between a few hundred to a few thousand MYR and up (MYR is Malaysian currency – 3.5 Malaysian dollars = 1 USD) from affiliate links per month. Her site traffic and income have grown every month.

Sara says that her earnings from her site have already exceeded her full-time income from her regular job where she’s an office administrator at an International company.

“I could quit anytime I want … but I intend to work another 1-2 years because I also love my full-time job,” she says.

Sara no longer has to worry about her finances. She’s able to put aside a big chunk of money into her savings account every month … and every year she goes on at least one nice vacation.

Owner: Jose and Jill
www.your-rv-lifestyle.com

Topic: Information about healthy all aspects of the Recreational Vehicle (RV) lifestyle.

After 60 years between them in the corporate world, Jill and Jose decided to retire early and hit the road full-time in their motor home.

Out of the blue one day, they received a call from one of the producers of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah was planning a show called “Recession-Proof Your Life”. Oprah’s producer had found Jose and Jill through their website where they document various aspects of the RV lifestyle.

When they producer asked if they’d like to appear on the show they said “of course!”. For their Oprah segment they drove their motor home right to the studio. Oprah and financial expert Suze Orman climbed on board and interviewed them.

It was the experience of a lifetime.

Jill says that on top of their site landing them on Oprah and being a source of income – it’s given her and her husband a great vehicle for documenting their travels and put some purpose behind their picture taking. Plus they love hearing from and answering their fellow RVers questions.

“Put your passions and interests to work for you! You never know where things will lead,” Jill says.

Owner: Richard Bergman
www.ideas-for-deck-designs.com

Topic: An information source for everything you need to know about how to build a better deck.

Richard Bergman has always loved building things with his hands such as decks, fences and even houses. He says it gives him great pleasure and satisfaction to see other people’s lives improved by his efforts.

So when he told his friends that he wrote and built his own website … he gives away most of his information for free on his site … and he still makes money from it — they were shocked to say the least.

How much money? In a typical month he brings in $2,000 or more. (Richard says he’s only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to monetizing his site). So while $2,000 per month is not currently an earth shattering amount, here’s the thing, because of his content rich website new business opportunities have opened up for him.

Now instead of working with his hands, he develops new deck and fencing products which he then manufactures and markets. Recently he picked up a big U.S. distributor (thanks to his website) that he’s shipping large volumes of product to of one of his recent product innovations.

He says having a content rich website has changed his life in every way imaginable: “It’s gone from a little idea in my head to a company with big potential that’s growing like crazy.”

He adds that he never would have been able to do this if he didn’t have a website that attracts so many visitors (his site is in the top 1% of sites).

“It shocks me. I literally pinch myself every day with a big smile on my face,” he says.

Owner: Birgit “B” Bradtke
www.kimberleyaustralia.com,
www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com,
www.discoverneem.com

Topic: Travel guides to the real Australian Outback written by someone who lives there.

Birgit Bradtke always hated the idea of having a job. She hated the restrictions it placed on her. Having to report in at a specific time and place was not her thing. She didn’t want to live that way.

Birgit, originally Germany, now lives in a remote and beautiful wilderness area in Australia called Kimberley. When people ask her what she does for work, she tells them she “travels for a living”.

How did it all become possible?

She wrote and published two Australian travel-themed websites. In peak season they bring her in about 10 thousand dollars a month (at the quietest time of the year it drops down to about 7 thousands a month). (Birgit has three other sites – two are just hobby sites, the third about Neem Oil brings in roughly 10% of her income.)

Birgit says she has a few big projects in the pipeline and within 12 to 24 months expects her site income to grow to between 15 and 20 thousand dollars a month.

She’s free to do what she wants, when she wants and where she wants. And she’s free to do, six months of the year, what she loves best: travel. She says she’d travel more, but she loves being home working in her garden and developing her five acres of land in Kimberley.