BigWord was made in 1998 by Jeff Sherwood and three others.
They went into the very niche market of textbooks. They ballooned to over
$80million in outside funding and had a team of over 250 people working for
them. Then all of a sudden in less than a year the bubble burst and they were
forced to go into bankruptcy.
Mr. Sherwood still thought the sight could be worth
something and barrowed money from his dad. He then went out to buy the site,
trademarks and domain at the company’s bankruptcy hearing. 10 years later BIGWORDS.com is growing at a constant rate of 15 percent and
is doing $20 million in referred sales.
It has been a steady clime but at least this time he is
doing it right. With all the competition out there it’s going to be tough but
with the right altitude and strategy it shows how a strong work ethic can
overcome most obstacles. They are less of a seller but more of a Kayak for
digital and traditional textbooks and help inform customers about prices. This
does help because they are not in direct competition with amazon etc. and still uses all of these sits as
affiliates by aggregating their prices for textbooks.
On average, students spend $1,137 each year on textbooks and
have an annual savings of $1K on BIGWORDS but don’t worry EMBA students they
also purchase textbooks too!
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