By PETE HOLLEY STAFF WRITER
If the Internet is a virtual gold rush, as Marc Ostrofsky is fond of saying, then the Houston entrepreneur is the wily prospector who ventured into the wilderness while everyone else was snoring.
In 1995, with the Web in its infancy, Ostrofsky paid $150,000 to a British Internet service provider for the domain name "
Business.com."
Four years later an investment company paid him $7.5 million for the name, setting a Guinness World Record that stood until 2009.
Two decades after he set up camp, it would appear the rush is over, the online riverbeds plucked clean of virtual gold.
Not so fast, Ostrofsky writes in his new book, Get Rich Click! The Ultimate Guide to Making Money on the Internet.
"We are truly in the bottom of the first inning when it comes to potential for growth and opportunity on the Internet," Ostrofsky writes. "There are hundreds of ways to make money using the Internet."
"We are truly in the bottom of the first inning when it comes to potential for growth and opportunity on the Internet," Ostrofsky writes. "There are hundreds of ways to make money using the Internet."
Ostrofsky would know. He's founded multiple online businesses, including
eTickets.com and
CuffLinks.com, and is a major shareholder and board member in
Blinds.com, a $74 million-a-year website selling window blinds and coverings.
Blinds.com was ranked No. 186 on the Internet Retailer 500 and was the 10th-fastest-growing site on the list, records show.
The essence of Ostrofsky's populist mantra declares that you need neither exceptional tech smarts nor a time machine to take advantage of online opportunity.
He said as much during an appearance earlier this month on ABC's The View, where he plugged his book and calmly weathered the spitfire questions of the show's clamorous cast.
His message appears to be resonating. In recent weeks Get Rich Click! hit No. 1 on the USA Today, Barnes & Noble and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists, as well as on Amazon.com, where another 5,000 books were sold in the hours after his TV appearance. He is scheduled to make a second appearance on The View Friday, where he will discuss new smart phone apps.
Ostrofsky — a father of five daughters whose accomplishments he is as likely to tout as his own — is on the verge of inking a deal with a major publisher to relaunch his book internationally next year.
Wearing an eggshell blue sweater and a friendly smile, he used The View as a coming-out party, if not an audition of sorts for the fledgling Ostrofsky brand.
He is in talks with two major networks for a TV show aimed at helping business owners expand their companies using consumer technologies. He sees himself as a Suze Orman of online real estate, someone who is part teacher, part speaker and part financial guru, the underlying difference between the two an unexpected one.
"My teeth are brighter," Ostrofsky said jokingly (but only sort of).
His teeth may gleam, but for now his star power does not. When it comes to crafting a guru persona, Ostrofsky's is still in the works.
"You might call me a tech intermediary," he said. "I know how to talk to the people in Silicon Valley and then take that information and explain it to everyone else."
A photography enthusiast, he says he prefers a role behind the camera, as the black-and-white photographs from around the world on his living room walls attest.
But if you want to know the new Ostrofsky, the gleaming grand piano that greets visitors as they walk through the front door of his comfortable Tanglewood home tells you all you need to know. This is no workmanlike upright. It's made of clear fiberglass, its previous owner the singer Billy Joel. That is to say, Ostrofsky, long a behind-the-scenes techie, looks increasingly comfortable stage center, where the lights rarely dim.
Ostrofsky has a confidence that borders on cockiness and is given to declarative flourishes that, while far from half-truths, can have the effect of simplifying the complexity of his accomplishments.
"I've never built a website," he told The View cast in an oft-repeated line that verges on sounding dubious for a man whose wired home has new iMacs in almost every room. "You need to know what you don't know and hire someone who does."
With no publishing experience, he began researching Get Rich Click! five years ago before self-publishing this spring, starting over from scratch at least two times along the way. Chock-full of info graphics and bullet points, with chapters that cover everything from making money using social networks to affiliate marketing — in which sites pay users for bringing in more customers — Ostrofsky has found a way to break down insider information into digestible details.
"He's able to come up with ideas in which everyone says, 'I should have thought of that,' " said longtime friend and business partner David Harris. "His ideas are complex, but sometimes they're also very obvious. He looks at things differently than most people."
It's a skill he honed over the years as a "technology wildcatter," one of the early online speculators who was willing to drill holes where others wouldn't. His decisions may have seemed risky to outsiders, but those close to Ostrofsky say his success has very little to do with luck. He is a methodical researcher and someone who brings a religious fervor to the way he gathers and analyzes information.
That zeal caught the attention of famed pop artist Peter Max, who looks to Ostrofsky for advice about how his firm can lower costs and stay up to date online. In the colorful computer whiz, the man known for his psychedelic brush strokes sees a kindred spirit.
"He's an idea maniac and someone with a highly creative mind," Max said. "If he lived in New York, I'd try to pick his brain over coffee every week."
Ostrofsky's public emergence appears sudden, but those close to him say it is one for which he has quietly, but methodically, prepared.
"He has incredible focus," Harris said. "Once he has an idea, he can focus exclusively on that idea almost to the exclusion of everything else. He can be obsessive."
With his multimillion-dollar fortune intact and his many online ventures quietly thriving, Ostrofsky could retire, except he's already tried that. Not surprisingly, for a man who lives in a state of constant motion, stasis is not an option.
"I've played enough golf for a lifetime," he said. "There's chaos out there, and chaos means opportunity.
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