Hi, my name is Dave and I am the author behind TheManWhoSoldtheWeb.com. Since I was kid, I have always been interested in making a quick buck. In fact, I started my first 'business' in 5th grade reselling comic books. I bought comics in the discounted 5-pack bundle from Toys R Us and sold them individually to classmates at the suggested retail prices. Unfortunately, the lunch aids shut down my operation, because apparently I wasn't allowed to sell stuff on school grounds.

1997 marked the birth of my first web site, a Foo Fighters fan site built on Geocities. I was in high school back then and it was the pre-Google, pre-SEO era. Yahoo! was the top dawg then. I had been modestly successful in growing my fan site within the niche community—in fact, I was contacted by MTV's FANatic television show for the Foo Fighters episode.

In 2001, I started college. I was admitted to Cornell University, where I earned my undergraduate and graduate degrees from the College of Engineering. During these years, I continued my interest in online businesses. I experimented with a broad array of different types of sites, from niche search engines, to social networks, to flash game sites, to forums, to web hosts, to tutorial sites, to social bookmarking sites, etc. This was the period when social networking sites just began to gain traction. I started my first social network about the same time as Myspace, which is post-Friendster, pre-Facebook, post-HotorNot. It's called NuTang.

In its heyday, NuTang had over 10,000 active members. It's the first social network site to integrate Google Maps and location-based social features, the first social network to offer revenue-sharing with its members, and the first social network to integrate social games. Today, it still has, as what people have described, a "cult following."

One of my most successful niche search engines is a music tablatures search engine called Tabpole. I play the guitar and hated searching 5 or more tablature sites to find a good tab. If only I could go to just 1 site that would aggregate tabs from all these different sites, then rank these tabs by user rating. Hmm. That's how Tabpole was born and it quickly gained a very large user base, as it was solving a tangible need.

During college, I built a lot of websites, and for a college student, I was making good money. However, I was naively chasing the overnight success story dream. Though that dream wasn't fulfilled, through the rigor, I did learn a number of key lessons. Foremost, I learned the power of autoscale. Each of my niche search engines and social networks generated millions of pages, amounting to a total of over 1 million pages indexed by Google. This allowed me to gain an incredible amount of organic traffic from search engines for long tail keywords.

In 2006, I earned my master's and I started my first full time job working for a global management consulting firm. This was a job I really enjoyed, because I love variety. I think consulting is one of the few jobs that exposes you to so many different businesses, different business environments, and different business problems. My clients ranged from startups to a Fortune 20 company, from Entertainment to Medical Devices, from operations in Anchorage, Alaska to Hangzhou, China.

As I focused more on my day job and career, I became increasingly disengaged from my online ventures. Many projects were put on the back burner and eventually died. During this time, I realized the necessity of autopilot design. For those of my sites that were truly on autopilot, they continued to grow and generate residual income despite years of negligence. For those that weren't, their traffic quickly wilted to a standstill.

Initially, my plan was to work in management consulting for 2 years. This 2-year apprenticeship led to a 3rd year, then to a 4th. By my 4th year, I felt myself becoming fully absorbed into the corporate rat race. I was getting burnt out, losing motivation, and stopped enjoying the work—but I couldn't find a reason to quit. At the time, I was making 6-digits and living off my corporate expense policy, staying at 4- to 5-star hotels and eating $60 meals every weekday. I had grown too accustomed to this lifestyle. And, I was too risk averse to leave it for anything of less certainty, stability, and immediate compensation.

In 2010, one of my coworkers introduced me to Contiki, a travel agency catered to people in their 20s and 30s. It seemed like something I needed, because, as I said, I was burnt out. For the first time in 4 years, I was taking a vacation not to visit family. I took the Contiki Mediterreanean Highlights 2-week tour.

I bought a number of books for my flights to and from Europe. However, I only ended up reading 1, the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. (I recommend Tim's blog, btw). This book and this vacation changed my perspective in 3 significant ways:

• First, I returned to Los Angeles with the decision that I would quit my job within 1 year. The primary principles taught in the 4-Hour Work Week resounded strongly with me. I felt, with the expertise in small online businesses that I have gained through the years, I could create the type of sustainable, lifestyle business preached in Tim's book. The only thing stopping me was my full time job, because it was swallowing up too much of my time and energy.
  
  
• Secondly, I gained an interest for travel. For me, this represents a fundamental shift in values—from a focus on the future (e.g. advancing my career as quickly as possible for a better life ahead) to a focus on the present (e.g. enjoying life now by exploring the world).
  
  
• Lastly, I realized I was chasing the wrong dream. My favourite movie of all time is Blow. Hey, don't judge. In Blow, Johnny Depp's character is told, "You have a dream, yet you failed. Why? You failed because you have the wrong dream." For me, I had always fantasized about the Internet startup with the huge payout after years of hard work. I wanted to be that accidental millionaire. However, starting an online company with the intention of exiting at an acquisition or IPO is like betting years of your life on winning the lottery. I have since shifted my goal to building a series of $100K online businesses that provide ongoing, passive income. This new dream is entirely within each. In fact, within just 1 year, the total income across all my ventures now has reached that threshold. I am confident each these sites can continue to scale to make $100K a piece.

And so, by May 2010, I quit my 6-figure job. It was a time when U.S unemployment was at an all time high. Most of my friends and family thought I was crazy!

Events quickly proved my naysayers wrong. Maybe I was lucky, because when I closed the door on my full time job, other doors immediately opened. In fact, as soon as I put in my 2-week resignation, through word of mouth, I started receiving part time consulting offers. This was the perfect solution for my situation. With part time consulting, I reduce my hours by well over 50% (because I used to work most weekends), while actually increasing my total compensation. With the extra time, I rigorously experimented with new site ideas that followed my autoscale, autopilot, value-add model. This includes niche search engines, a turnkey solution I released based off the Indeed API (300K Page Job Search In-a-Box), and niche business directories, the subject of the first guide I published on this site (Pick Your Niche).

You know, it's been almost a full year since I quit my job and now I'm making almost twice as how much I made previously—and working a lot less hours. I couldn't be happier! (Well, I could be, but you get the picture.)

So, this is the story of the first 28 years of my life. Thank you reading and I hope you enjoy and learn from what this site has to offer.

Dave Tang
Email: dave@[this domain]
3/20/2011
Updated: 6/16/2011

Isn't virtual friendship beautiful?