What can we all learn from the success of mint.com? Although the company seems like a simple idea in and of itself, it is fairly complex. However, the cost that went into producing the site is definitely offset by not having to advertise.

Mint.com has created a site that allows its customers a free service and makes money. When people find better deals on banks etc mint.com makes the money when people switch. For example if you change your insurance mint.com may make a fifty dollar commission. Now since the service is free multiply that by millions of users! This is why mint.com sold for 170 million. They also partnered with montley fool @ fool.com for free advertising and it spread like wild fire. Mint.com took a task that was hard and changed it into something fun and easy and this is important. When you can make something fun that normally isn’t for example taxes, then you can find success.

Mint also allows its customers to see how much they are spending on certain items and find ways to cut down on their spending. Sounds simple ahhh?! Well in a recession just think how useful this is for the customers. They can see that maybe they can save 1,500 a year on food.

I think analyzing the situation and understanding the market has allowed mint.com to find great success.

Storeenvy is the new kid on the block of amazing new sites being created. The new trend is user generated content and marketing. This is done by creating stores for free and having sellers or affiliates advertise there products for you. Probably the most successful site like this thus far is threadless.com. StoreEnvy brings a new level to the strategy creating separate stores for each user with custom designs, sounds great and the prices are even better.

Inkd is another amazing site from the creator of a few companies that sold to amazon and cafepress I believe. So these people obviously know what they are doing. The site is the worlds first market for original prints if you don’t count etsy in on this. However, the site seems to be generating more users and content as the months progress. Inkd.com has an amazingly simple yet elegant site design with easy functionality that just makes it a blast to use and navigate.

If you are looking at starting an ecommerce user generated site look no further!

Obviously our economic times our tough so as an entrepreneur how can we make things EASIER on people. Here are three companies that aim at doing just that.

1. Foodzie
2. Ideapaint
3. Hey Josh

Foodzie is a Wholefoods marketplace of sorts which resembles sites such as inkd.com and etsy.com. It is amazing the marketplace that have spawned off of amazon and ebay. There are definitely many other market segments in this area that can be taken advantage of.

Ideapaint is in and of itself amazing. It is something that should have been thought of long ago. It will be interesting to see how well it catches on since 50 sq ft is about 200 bucks. However, with a 10 year warranty this might be a good price.

Hey Josh is just a fun site to look at it is a self promotion blog of sorts. It really is amazing that someone can create a site like this that will generate 500k in revenue. WOW!

SO HOW CAN YOU FIND YOUR OWN SUCCESS BASED OFF THESE IDEAS?
1. inspiration and creative motivation
– these are simple ideas that were followed through, they are easily marketable.
2. niche market
– foodzie knew who they were aiming for and it was easy for them to hit that market segment almost the same as mint.com – recently sold for 170 million!
3. Improve on these products
- they are great but how can they be better, what markets are they missing

One of the main questions I get is, How do I get to break even with my company or the company I want to start? First off this is an amazing question and probably one of the first questions you should be able to answer before you start a company. Here is the main process I use to find if I will be able to break even on a venture. Normally, if I am not able to break even within the first year I will not even attempt my idea. I could try to explain excel charts/graphs and other things that I make, but at the end of the day it can easily be simplified.

The most recent person I talked to about buying a company wanted to buy a website for 12,000 dollars, with the hopes of paying for the site in the first three years and then turning a profit! This was obviously the hopes and dreams aspect. So the first question I proposed had to deal with profitability and page views since the site was indeed a blog.

Site Stats
-200,000 page views per month
-400 per month profit after domain hosting etc

The first plan of action was to see if the site could become more profitable. I know that you should be able to make $2-15 dollars per CPM (thousand impressions) Therefore the site should bring in 400-3,000 per month. The site was bringing in 400 in profit so it was probably bringing in 500 all together.

Upsides of the site
-strong user base (rss)
-Has been around over 6 months
-Other places ads can be placed without damaging the content (extra 100-300 per month)

I told my friend that buying the site would probably be a good choice, and luckily it turned out to be. Within the first month of running Myads on myspace, month user base increased by 40% with only 1,000 investment. Users were captured using the footerad rss subscription method. Monthly profitability is around 650 right now and should stay constant with the help of additional ads. The site will be paid for in a little less than two years and a steady flow of 7,500 a year is not bad.

The company was bought by taking out a prosper loan for 12,000 at 9% which is 381 dollars per month.