After brainstorming with friends about how to make money during the dot-com boom several years ago, Tony O’Neill began offering titillating text to owners of personal digital assistants. At the time, 10,000 PDA owners signed up for a free subscription to read four salacious stories a day, five days a week. When the stories took off, the San Jose, Calif., twentysomething knew he had found a niche market for palmstories.com.
“People started e-mailing us, wanting images,” O’Neill said. “So in the summer of 2000, we introduced the images.”
O’Neill won’t reveal how many paying subscribers he has, but back in 2001, PalmStories had 700 to 1,000 people who were paying $5.95 a month for a subscription. The fee is up to $7.95.
He also won’t talk about how much he makes, but said the cost of delivering content is pennies per megabyte.
“It’s very profitable,” O’Neill said. “We had a slowdown when the dot-com bubble burst, but we’ve seen a big up-tick.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
