Way back in 2002, I helped launch AOL for Small Business (later AOL Small Business), a segmented version of AOL. I eventually took over as General Manager, and at our height we were the #1 small business destination on the web with 2.4 million monthly unique visitors, 51 million monthly page views and a custom welcome screen that supported 2.1 million paying subscribers, equivalent to over $540 million in yearly subscriber revenue.<\/p>\n
Not too shabby.<\/p>\n
Of course, I felt the small business category a bit too staid for my tastes after years of working at AOL Games and AOL Computing, so I tried to come up with something that I thought would wow our users. I eventually landed on the notion that most everyone has the dream of being their own boss. Why not explore phenomenon in what would become The Startup Online Reality Series<\/strong>. Not your traditional reality series — no one was “voted” off the island, but 1) the very first online reality series wherein 2) we followed four small businesses in their first year of business through a blend of insightful articles written by Geoff Williams<\/a>, blogs by the owners and nifty videos produced by Steve Gibson.<\/p>\n It turns out three of those videos are still online, starting with New World Salsa in Vermont…<\/p>\n