HelloMetro.com has over 1,500 hyperlocal mass developed city websites in 96 countries which generate millions of visitors per month. Clark Scott founded the company with one other partner and pretty much ran all of the company's operations from his Indiana home during the start-up stage. Scott built all of the website's himself with a little help from freelancers.
The two partners invested about $10,000 total to get things going with this vision back in 1999. Over the years, HelloMetro has inked partnerships with SuperPages.com, ForRent.com, Yahoo.com, Vonage.com, Dollar Rent A Car, Thrifty Car Rental and many other direct advertisers for all the big bucks.
HelloMetro is a great example which once you analyze closely will provide you with all of the information and insights required on how to succeed with mass development of an on-topic network, especially in the geo-space which is really hot right now in 2009 and going forward.. But those who had this visions years ago, capitalized right there and then. They made the investments a while back and seen explosive growth over the years. They laid the foundation and then built something truly special and unique when time was right.
For the first few years they weren't really anywhere on the map but once they figured things out, they started to scale up and go where the money was which is the biggest metro areas in the US. I first noticed their mass developed sites in early 2006.. I remember seeing dozens of them in FL and CA. I was running a large real estate lead capture operation covering NY, NJ, CT, FL, CA, etc.. and I kept seeing HelloMetro's whitelabel sites in all of those states... Been following Clark Scott's work ever since :) It's really cool stuff...
By 2003 the 300 mass developed HelloMetro sites are generating around 100,000 unique visitors per month. In 2004 they grew nicely and generating over 200,000 visitors per month. By the end of that year a total of 340 sites generated $2,000,000 in profits for the 2004 year. By the end of the following year the HelloMetro network doubled it's revenues to about $4 million. Site traffic was also up, with 4.3 million unique visitors per month in it's network.
By mid 2006 HelloMetro is averaging more than 3 million visitors and is rapidly expanding. The company is operating 550 mass developed website's. A little over 300 sites in the U.S. and 200 international sites in most major metropolitan areas worldwide.
Fast forward two years later to 2008 and HelloMetro's network of website's are still rocking hard and generating over 3.7 million unique monthly visitors and continue to grow at a rate of 20% month over month. The company generated $7,500,000 in revenue in 2008. In early 2009 HelloMetro hired 17 content writers in 12 cities to cover local news and various other information.
HelloMetro.com currently has a team of a dozen people, including five direct salespeople. The company is on track to make $9 million or more by the end of 2009. HelloMetro.com spends a few hundred thousand dollars per month on Google AdWords PPC to drive targeted visitors to it's 1,500 mass developed local city website's.
So what is up with HelloMetro nowadays?! Well, the company has not taken a direct hit by the worldwide recession, but CEO and company president Clark Scott is being cautious... He has laid off two employees over the summer, dropping the total employment to 11 now... They will surely beat $10,000,000 in profits by years end is my prediction and will continue to expand their hyperlocal operation because there is still tons of opportunities to be had.
Now, as you can see... Their success didn't happen overnight. It took years to get from one point to the other and to the next and so on. Things moved really slow in early 2000 but really started happening in recent years. We are almost in 2010 and let me tell you... What HelloMetro has accomplished in 10 years can be realistically accomplished today in less than 12 month's. We have much better technologies and so many more resources available... Virtually endless amounts of opportunities if you put your mind to it and rock a niche out.
Development isn't easy!! If it was... Everybody and their mama would be a lazy ass millionaire by now. You need to come up with original ideas. You need to take risks... etc. You gotta do a lot of things right before you even make one dollar in profit. It's all about setting things up properly to be successful for the future. It won't happen overnight but if you clearly understand that and prepare to make a good run for it.. It will work out nicely. Slowly, but surely!
If you hate taking risks and looking for 100% guarantees, go grab an application at a local McDonalds and you can earn $7 or $8 per hour working the cash registrar, flipping burgers or whatever. If you want your own cash registrar ringing up clients 24/7/365 with most of the operation on auto-pilot then look no further... The internet is where it's at and domain mass development makes it as easy as possible. Invest your cash wisely in something you truly believe in.. Continue investing all of the time and energy you have in it and it will work out because it always does! Why the hell not? :)
Articles at WannaDevelop.com
05/08/2010: Dozens of exact match product / shopping related sites at auction now @ Latonas.com 03/19/2010: All domain development = $99 per domain... Pretty good deal, don't you think? 02/18/2010: New year.. New products... New prices.. New staff... Lots going on in the development biz! 02/06/2010: Must see auctions at Bido! Five days, back-to-back all this week.. Over 100 keyword domains priced to sell! No offers will be turned down 12/01/2009: Domain Stryker pre-registration now officially open... Launch date set for later this month!
