Posts Tagged ‘Australia’

Australia is world leader in online startups

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

Australia is leading the way across the globe for new online businesses.

The amount of internet start-ups increased 200% from 2010 to 2012, outpacing both the United States and Britain by four times. However, that doesn’t mean that these new businesses are automatically booming. Many of them incur losses in the first few years of operating until they gain momentum and start making profit.

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Freelancer pushes competition out of the way to become best

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

With $50 million in revenue, Freelancer.com, started in 2009 by Matt Barrie and stationed in Sydney, has overtaken its competition to be the go-to place for businesses to find top notch freelance contractors and for those contractors to find work.

Recently, the website made headlines for expanding its innovative crowdsourcing contest feature beyond design categories to include projects in any category.

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Website retailer rakes it in buying and selling virtual properties

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013

Flippa is the premier site in the world dedicated to being a marketplace for buying and selling websites.

Founded in Melbourne in 2009 by Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle, the site has over 200,000 registered users buying and selling websites.

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SurfStitch rides wave to success

Monday, July 1st, 2013

Garnering 30 million site visits and over 250 million page views since its launch in 2008 by Justin Cameron and Lex Pederson, SurfStitch, an online retailer that specialises in surf gear that is headquartered on the Gold Coast, is one of Australia’s most highly trafficked eCommerce sites and has pulled in $30 million in revenue for the company.

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The Iconic online retailer’s push to be number one finally catches up to it

Saturday, June 29th, 2013

The online retailer The Iconic (officially named Internet Services Australia 1 Pty Ltd in Australia) that popped up in 2011 and started laying waste to its bricks and mortar competitors is now itself in trouble.

Recent reports have emerged that The Iconic, which promises excellent service and speedy delivery as its selling points, isĀ hemorrhaging both money and staff as it tries to cut costs to stop the bleeding.

From August 2011 to December 2012, Iconic had revenue of $30.6 million but a loss of more than $44.7 million.

The company’s owners, the German Samwer brothers have used a similar model of doing business that has led to great success in Germany, India, Singapore, Poland and the Philippines through their head company, Rocket Internet.

Internal documents from the company that had been obtained by the media show that the company’s business plan is to jump into new markets and become number one at any cost using the promise of free, overnight delivery.

And whilst it has worked in other markets, it seems to have stumbled in Australia so far.

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Dating site RSVP’d a hefty purchase price

Friday, June 28th, 2013

Founded all the way back in 1997 by Jay Hennock and Hannah Schwartz, Australia’s No. 1 dating site, RSVP.com.au, sold for close to $40 million to Fairfax in 2005. It is headquartered in Sydney.

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SourceBottle connects the people looking to be connected

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

SourceBottle founder Rebecca Derrington must have seemed like an angel to journalists looking for sources for news stories when she started SourceBottle in 2009.

The site, headquartered in Melbourne, allows both journalists looking for sources to quote in stories and people who want to act as quotable sources to register on the site for the purposes of connecting the two groups.

She started in Australia and has since expanded to other countries.

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Wotif issues net profit downgrade

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Brisbane-based online travel accommodation provider Wotif issued a net profit after tax downgrade to between A$50.5 million and A$51.5 million for the 2013 financial year, some of which was attributed to its Asia Web Direct domain names being affected by recent Google ranking criteria changes.

Wotif was started in 2000 by Graeme Wood and has $1.161 billion in revenue.

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iSelect debuts, stumbles on ASX

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

iSelect, an Australian online insurance comparison company, made the opposite of a splash when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange recently. It started at A$1.85 per share but fell and closed at A$1.56 per share, losing 15.7 percent of its market capitalisation of A$479.3 million in the process.

Reasons given for iSelect’s poor performance were that its technology was “not groundbreaking” and it already has strong competition in its field with even more competition possible.

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iPledg grows business while helping others to do same

Saturday, June 22nd, 2013

Started in 2011 in Queensland and boasting $500,000 of revenue in 2012, iPledg founders Bryan Vadas and Andy Tompkins have continued to grow the online crowd funding platform while helping other businesses and community projects get off the ground by connecting the people with the ideas directly with potential backers.

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