Remember Markus Frind - the "AdSense Millionaire?"

January 8, 2009

When I interviewed him back in 2006 he was rocking the blogosphere with barely credible claims of making $25,000 a day from Google AdSense. Many took one look at his (then, quite unattractive) site and scoffed in disbelief.

Today? he's on the cover of Inc. Magazine.

His site, plentyoffish.com gets 1.6 billion (yes, with a B) pages views per month (yes, per month). And he brings in a cool $10million a year for his trouble. And his trouble? Less than an hour of work per day.

To demonstrate, Frind turns to his computer and begins fiddling with a free software program that he uses to manage his advertising inventory...Then, six minutes and 38 seconds after beginning his workday, Frind closes his Web browser and announces, "All done."

All done? Are you serious? "The site pretty much runs itself," he explains. "Most of the time, I just sit on my ass and watch it." There's so little to do that he and his girlfriend, Annie Kanciar, spent the better part of last summer sunning themselves on the French Riviera. Frind would log on at night, spend a minute or two making sure there were no serious error messages, and then go back to sipping expensive wine. A year ago, they relaxed for a couple of weeks in Mexico with a yacht, a captain, and four of Kanciar's friends. "Me and five girls," he says. "Rough life."

Rough life is right, sheesh.

The site, to be charitable, is still plain. 

Frind is aware of his site's flaws but isn't eager to fix them. "There's no point in making trivial adjustments," he says. Frind's approach -- and the reason he spends so little time actually working -- is to do no harm. This has two virtues: First, you can't waste money if you are not doing anything. And second, on a site this big and this complex, it is impossible to predict how even the smallest changes might affect the bottom line. Fixing the wonky images, for instance, might actually hurt Plenty of Fish. Right now, users are compelled to click on people's profiles in order to get to the next screen and view proper headshots. That causes people to view more profiles and allows Frind, who gets paid by the page view, to serve more ads. "The site works," he says. "Why should I change what works?"

This article is a great read.

See also: 

• 10 Questions with Markus Frind
• Video of the photo shoot with him and the aforementioned ladies.

Photo from Inc. Magazine.

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Funny you posted about this. I am watching the Titans/Ravens game with that very Inc Magazine issue on my lap and just read this article. His revenue is verified now isn't it lol. It goes to show you how efficient the Internet can make business.