Did your first website turn out to be profit / popular or did it just make profit in a form of experience? My case would be the latter.:D

The first site I ever set up was back in 2000. It was a niche novelty gift site. I started making money at it after 2 months, and sold the site 2 years later for low 5 figures.

Vito

I started my first site in January 1999 (catfished.com) and it has become fairly popular with fishermen, especially California fishermen, I even make a few bucks with Adsense and a few other ads.

First site was for my Dad's shareware program back in 1996 or 1997. Learned pretty quick how fast 50 megabytes of bandwidth a month can flush down the tubes :P. Also learned that unless a web host can show logs of the bandwidth consumed, they ought not to bill for overages ;).

My first site is still bringing in good revenue from Google Adsense. I don't maintain it as well as I should, but I hope to make some updates soon.

Started in maybe '96, launched in '97... it sucked, BIG TIME.

Considering I did not have a clue about what I was doing, I did good to get it on the net. Back then NO ONE even knew much about the net... when I mentioned I purchased something on the net people would look at me dazed.

But my first site, I had to teach myself html... and no one else around me knew what it was. I did not have resources (no forums that I knew about or sites). I had to use a couple of books and looking at other website code.

I knew computers fairly well, but that does not translate to knowing the web.

my first site was on geocities for a low budget library, they really liked it :)
this was back when geocities was brand new (before ads and when windows 95 was the hot new thing)

my first site was on geocities for a low budget library, they really liked it :)
this was back when geocities was brand new (before ads and when windows 95 was the hot new thing)

yup you sound like me... I started out there too 96-97. I then became a community leader there in the children's area. Then Geocities decided that all content became theirs. Thats when I bought a domain , met MattF , Martie , Chicken and his death squad.... got involved here with the wonderful world of hosting. Had many a bad host , a few good ones , then became one.

my whole online life in one paragraph LOL

and to answer the question my first site wasn't allowed to make money it was against the TOS.

Started my first production website (icyrealm.com) in 2003 based on gaming, graphics, and anime. Its community grew to over 4000 members, but I shut it down in 2005 and changed its name.

I'll tell you in about a year. I just started out but trying to make money with ads.

I made a really bad looking website on aol memberpages around 95ish. Was basically quick .html files showing how to get access to secret AOL areas. I use to be a Guide on AOL, so I had privy information ;)

First site was awesome! Was an about me page, and had a comment section, and that became my class's forum. Oh yeah!

my first site was on geocities for a low budget library, they really liked it :)
this was back when geocities was brand new (before ads and when windows 95 was the hot new thing)
Much the same here, but I started with tripod. The site is still up after 10+ years :D

"Profit in the form of experience" - I like that way of putting it :)

My first few sites come under that :P

my first was a geocities sites, I was more interested in web design than making money, so created a few sites on diffrent free hosts but soon I was actually able to make some money out of those sites.

I believe I started around 1999 using Angelfire. I don't really think the site had a purpose. No Ads. But it definitely was a learning experience... As much as one can be using Anglefire. :/

Built my first site with Publisher 97, and full of animated gifs and midi background. For some reason it never made a dime.

Although I later found a way to get #1 at Infoseek for literally any keyword and made a lot of money on affiliate programs. That gravy train ended as others also figured out the secret.

Hello,

I built my first site in... 1999 or 2000. I am with the previous replies, using Geocities and also Tripod(?). I think Geocities was the most popular free webhosting at that time. Or, is it Tripod, Angelfire, or... Port5?

Firstly built only for fun... for a personal site with pages like: home, about, hobby... and guestbook! -- still from free service provider..

Oh my... it's almost 10 years ago... :)

First site ever was when I was 12 (so that would be 2004). I opened a site called "GoHack", which was all about hacking in to websites using exploits and "non-skiddy" techniques. It was fun, but it got boring. Actually, GoHack was what really launched me in to the web hosting business - I first started with HostGator, but they kicked me off in about a months time, so I had to find a new provider, but couldn't - During that time, the site went down for good, but I did end up with an interest in starting a web hosting site... So I did (not knowing practically anything about it), BluFX at the age of 13 - Sold it a year later, and recently started up GeekLayer (my current company), which this time I actually know what I'm doing, haha.

Angelfire back in 1999. Just a hobby site with HORRIBLE graphics and animated GIF's galore! A few of my sites achieved mild popularity with the Lycos Community users, otherwise they were horrid by today's standards. Like an 80's haircut.

-fin
Thales

My first site? Geocities, before Yahoo purchased 'em, many moons ago.

How'd it do? It was horrible! Then again, it was a Geocities site, and it was basically just html

I think I had a spaceports site, or similar.
I don't remember when I started but it was in the 90s sometime, and me and a friend made a simple one.

lol, I can still remember finishing chapter 1 of my dad's HTML book and I had a centered image *ring ring* "Hello" "Dad! You have to see my website!" :D

The first few years were learning learning learning :D

It's amazing some of your first websites are still online! I have 2-3 I really wish I'd kept just to look back on.

My first website for myself was my own portfolio site. And I posted it on WHT in 2003 and got too many acclaims. This website gave me too many projects from WHT users. So, it all depends on the content, idea of your website and how, where you market it. If you have a good website, fame and money is for sure.

I think it was computer tips

My first site was in 1996, a playstation codes website. After about a year I had gathered a bit of a following, obtained some sponsored ads, and had about 250,000 visitors. I shut it down because it slowly became time consuming and I was doing other more important stuff.

The first site I ever joined was Clantemplates.com, back in around 2002 when it was a .tk. Used to play Age of Kings with the owner of the site, so I guess this can be called a site I started since I helped build it from bottom to where it is today. Turned out pretty good!

My first site was also on geocities. It of course didn't make a dime, but gave me alot of experience..

My first website was(actually is) corpoAlert.com .. Its is a site cum blog on the business news and news from corporate world.

I am looking forward to sell it off.. Let's see how much I am able to make from it. It is now more than a year old and holding PR4..

Revenue and visitors are also good enough.

My first site, was about in 2003/2004. Never did profit from it, since I was new in the web industry.

That would be a site hosted from my dorm computer back in '97 - I doubt more than three people ever visited it :)

A salesforce.com precursor in 2000.

Bombed without a single sale. Still own the domain though.

My first site was comical!! I had just learned html and was "trying it out" for the first time. I was able to put streaming media (music) on the site but it looked awful!

It was a good learning experience though

My first site was a gaming help site. It was terrible with seo but I still sold for 525.

I had a few very popular AOL hosted websites back in the 90's, but haven't pursued it much and never made a penny on those obviously.

My first site was an info site on Angelfire in 2001, it was horrific, but i learned HTML by using the WYSIWYG editor there and looking at the code.

My first money making site, i just opened a couple months ago and have one completed project and 3 in the wings, all word of mouth.

My first site was on Lycos free hosting. It sucked bigtime, lol. My first serious website was amygdela.com and I sold it in 2005 for €250,- :)

well i made my first site today :) and its going swimmingly. I have just got to replace lipsum and im done :) also going to have a ad on it i think

I made my first site in January 2007 by name mindxstudio[dot]com, due to hosting and domain name problem it was down, now it is running fine and getting job through site...

Well my first sites were an information/resource sites on japanese animation. One was fairly popular back in its heyday because I recruited some awesome staff and we even got referanced by a hobby magazine in Japan. Didn't really make money off of them but it was never meant to. Did manage to make an awesome community and meet people who I still keep in touch with 6 years later. Not bad for a middleschool/highschool projects when I was barely learning web design.

Other than those resource sites I have two ecommerce ventures both launched very recently so really too early to tell. /me shrugs

My first site was at homestead.com and I think geocities as well. I also tried doing something on cross-something or other, I can't remember the name. All free hosting though and I used the horrid Frontpage! AGHHHH! I quickly moved up to dreamweaver/flash and made my first site which was flash-based at thewrittenpage.com. I believe that was either in 98 or 99. That's when domains were like $70 for two years I think! Gosh things have changed. My first purchased host was interland. Gosh was that ages ago. I then made my second site for my high-school class website (I'm a teacher) at benedictsclass.com in 2002. It originally was a flash-based site then moved to become a wordpress site. And that's still there now.

Three months before I hosted my first website. But I cann't see any improvements in my website till.

My first site was in 2006, still garnering more visits, profits through donations but is extremely time consuming, thinking of selling it :)

My first site (qualitylogos.net) was doing OKAY at the beginning, I would spend all day advertising and get maybe 1-2 customers =P

my first time website in 2003/2004, and i found phpnuke(on the netcafe desktop :p ), i dont know what is it... read the readme, other manual... host it at free hosting (portland.co.uk) .... yeah thats it... and now i able to create my own cms... :D

The first website I ever created was for my band back in '98 and it was hosted on the free space my ISP gave with our highspeed Internet service. While the band broke up long ago, I still have the site up (now under its own domain name) for historical purposes.

The next website I created was the first website I purchased hosting and a domain for and was a local music community site with forums and a CMS. It was started in 2002 and grew to be very popular within our local community and is still online.

A year later the success of that website caused me to upgrade to a reseller account and sell hosting to a few local bands to help pay our hosting bills. I had a bunch of friends and bands sign up immediately so within a few months I registered as a business and started up our hosting company.

5 years later we have a commercial office, own all of our hardware, and this has been my full time job for the past 3 1/2 years or so.

To think I was planning on getting my PhD in Sociology. :)

My first attempt at a site was when the bubble burst. Didn't know what I was doing and still don't know what i'm doing now. I don't think I learned anything nor made any profits. :(

It's a blog about music, politics, and technology for the most part. I keep it updated constantly with new and original articles. I hate the idea of being a spam blog. In regards to visits, as all new sites are, its growing at a decent rate. I try not to worry about how many visitors I have at the moment. In a year I might be able to get a better idea of where I am at. Feel free to check it out and leave some comments

<<Signature to be set up in your profile>>

I'll tell you about it on the first week of september 2009 (I'm building it right now). Hopefully, I'll have some statistic and money from my site.
Cheers!

First site was in... 2002 when I was 12. Was extremely succesfully, generated a large amount of profit and ran for just over 5 years, had a major company interested in it 2 years ago, decided to change company name & now generating a lot more income from the new site/company.

I've had a lot of successfull sites, infact have sold a numerous amount of them to much larger companies.

Regards,
Nick Coates.

I started around 2002 with a simple Geocities webpage. I then moved to my own .com about 5 years ago, and have been upgrading ever since. Moved from your standard shared plans, to sharing a dedicated server, to now managing my own server with plans to keep on expanding. When your site gets 7k+ unique hits a day with almost 300 gigabytes of transfer a day, you need to keep growing. Luckily, my revenue has been keeping up so that I'm not losing money with the site.

My first website is host by geocities and still exist, I remember I use Dreamwaver to create, it took me a month to design. Of course compare today work it's ugly, but I love it. :D

My first site was a romanian karate site. I started it in 2002, march. It's still online and "kicking" and I have 30 more sites in the network. It was the starting potint for me as a web designer and the moment I realized this is what i want to do with my life ;)

I still own my first site, have owned the domain since 2003. It was popular at stages but I kept changing the purpose of the site and traffic has slowed down. Its been pretty neglected dont think I've updated it at all this year.

I setup my first website 8 years ago offering free and paid clipart.

Not so much of a demand for it anymore!! ;)

My 1st site was ok, we did really well the 1st 6 months after that I think the lack of updating the news section and content on the site scared away customers.

the 2nd site was ok, had a gamers look to it. sales drop a lot


and the 3rd.. well its up now.

My first site was for 1 yers ago. And that sucks so dont tell you that ****!

there were not many ways to earn money online when i started web designing. i started my blog and many other sites way before adsense was in place. those were for experience and a lot of fun.

my first was a geocities sites, I was more interested in web design than making money, so created a few sites on diffrent free hosts but soon I was actually able to make some money out of those sites.

same here captain!