The greatest internet success story is the story of Pierre Omidyar, a French-Iranian born in Paris who migrated to the USA. Omidyar believed that the human race is basically good and that online selling and buying would work. This is a man who believed that auction online would work, yet, he had never been to an auction all his life. Thus, in 1995, he tried and set up his own site called Auctionweb which mainly sold antique,books, eletrical equiptment, comics and computer items. Remarkably, despite the naysayers who said it wouldn't work, it did.
Omidyar left his regualr job and hired a single employee by the name of Chris Agarpao. Actionweb was doing so well, though at that time he only had a modest office with only about two chairs and a table. Despite this, in 1995, Auctionweb hosted over ten thousand bids. His business was working so he decided to later call his enterprise Echo Bay, but that name was taken by a Canadian company in Nevada. So he settled for ebay. Yes, the same great Ebay today. Seeing the profitability of the idea, real enterpreneurs were only too willing to help him - including Magraret Whitman (now Mccain's Campaign Manager) who helped develop ebay into the what it is today. Last we heard from Omidyar he was drining a 4 million dollar car and he's retired at 41. He founded the Omodyar Network that does philantrophy and humanitarian work positively affecting millions of people.
There were also the four young Israeli teenagers in 1996 who started Mirabilis net and tried to invent a "chatting" software. These four young teenagers then, were all computer "nerds", who wanted to give out free soft ware that anyone can download to communicate with anyone in the world. Thus, was born ICQ. In 1998, AOL bought the software from Mirabilis and these "kids" are now retired millonaires. That's the second best success internet story. Today there are 700 million users of ICQ in the planet.
At 21 years old Mark Zukerberg, a computer "nerd" since he was in grade 6, decided to come up with a computer programme that can be used for all Harvard students for networking and showing off their profiles. This later expanded to include most of the Coleges and Universities in the USA. He lauched Facebook in March 2004. Today, there are about 7 million users all over the globe.
Alex Tew was just an extremely broke College student who needed money. After some thirty minutes of "desperate thinking" he came up with the idea of selling one million pixels of advertising space on a website for $1 each. Initially, he thought of it as an insane idea but he had no choice but TRY. Besides, he had nothing to lose. He had his homepage, a million dollar idea dot com online and running two days later and sold his "ad space" at Ebay.
It was the UK media buyers who bought his space (ad pixels) and he managed to sell millions of them after those selling products found out that his idea worked. Today, Tew is rich and is taking his time deciding what next to do in his life despite the fact that most of the huge computer companies were offering him the best jobs. His advise : "Keep trying. Be creative. And never listen to nay sayers!"
Mr. Darren Rowse is another internet success story.In November 2002, he started his first blog that covered everything from topics of culture, spirituality,politics, emerging church and life in Australia. Being a Christian, Rowse also wrote about his hopes, dreams and point of views. He urged his Christian community to join him. That was when problogger began which now helps other bloggers earn money by blogging. He was also the first to write one "killer" article about digital cameras that made him discover how Google's Adsense contextual ad system works and today, he maintains 20 blogs and google adsense sustains his comfortable living as he keeps on blogging.
There are probably a hundred of thousands success stories on the web. These are the main examples of how a small idea followed through, can be like a seed which gains for anyone a million fold back. Perhaps there is some truth in Rhonda Byrne's Law of Attraction. Find out and try whatever you're thinking. It just might work.