Courtesy of Laughing Squid
Fark.com is a social community website where users submit interesting news links and comment on them. What started as a simple news link sharing website has turned into a multimillion dollar grossing site for on entrepreneur. Not only does Fark gross millions each year now, but it was actually the first reported blog style site to break the one million dollars a year marker. For this and more we take a look at entrepreneur Drew Curtis in the spotlight this week. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons any upcoming entrepreneur can learn.
Summary:
Name: Drew Curtis
Age: 37
Location: Kentucky
Claim to fame: Fark.com (Social community website where users submit interesting news links and comment on them.)
Initial cost: <$1000
How He Did It:
Drew Curtis was born in 1973 in Kentucky and graduated from Luther College in Iowa in 1995. Shortly after graduating college, he started a small local ISP Provider business covering a few local counties. Curtis registered the domain Fark.com in 1997, but did not do anything with it until later in 1999 when he launched the Fark.com service we all know today. He came up with the idea as a solution to a problem he was having with his friends where he would always be sending random links almost daily numerous times to different friends on all different topics through email, which was always a bit of a hassle. His solution was Fark.com; a place where anyone could submit news stories on a variety of topics and people could comment and discuss in the process basically centralizing his hobby of link emailing. Fark has since become a multimillion dollar business with 1000s of link submissions each day.
Lessons Learned:
- Success takes time to fully realize (Curtis ran with the site for several year before hitting the mainstream. Building a following takes time for any web business).
- Take action today on future projects (A simple step for the future such a reserving a domain name can go a long way down the road.)
- The best ideas often come from solutions to everyday problems
- Building an online business takes time, but can lead to many other avenues of success (i.e. books, etc…)
- Give your idea the resources and time to grow to see the true potential
Did you miss last weeks spotlight? Check it out here: The Entrepreneur Spotlight: Seth Godin of Squidoo.com.
Be on the lookout for our next entrepreneur spotlight article in this ongoing series. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the success of this week’s entrepreneur and his entrepreneurship characteristics. Also, please let me know if you have an entrepreneur you would like to see featured here in the weeks to come.
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