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Marc Ostrofsky

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Country: USA
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Marc Ostrofsky is the Founder of Internet REIT and CEO at Multimedia Ventures. He is also an author, known for his bestselling book Get Rich Click!.[1]

Domaining

Mr. Ostrofsky was a domainer before he wrote his first book. He is the founder and co-founder of several web properties. Mr. Ostrofsky currently owns eTickets.com, Cufflinks.com, SummperCamps.com and is a major share holder in Blinds.com.[2]

In 1999, he sold the domain business.com to eCompanies for $7.5 Million and consequently landed in the Guiness Book of World Records for the most expensive domain ever sold.[3] He sold the domain ebusiness.com to another competitor for $10 Million.

He bought SummerCamps.com from a doctor whose son had created a very crude site. He paid for the purchase of the domain within 2.5 years. He still holds the domain and is waiting for the right offer to come to sell the domain. He also owns eTickets.com and e-Tickets.com, he uses these websites to point traffic to a third party website that send him 10% of the profits each month. He also owns other names, including Consulting.com, Photographer.com, MutualFunds.com, HeartDisease.com, BeautyProducts.com, TechToys.com, Bachelor.com, .net and .org, Psychologists.com, Cars.info, CosmeticSurgery.net and 300 others.[4]

Career History

Mr.Ostrofsky has founded five IT magazines and several trade shows. He is one of the pioneers of the voice mail/voice processing market, the private pay phone market, the operator services market, the telecom reseller & VoIP market and the prepaid telephone card market in the United States.

He also founded www.idNames.com, an international domain name registry service that was sold to Network Solutions, and is now a division of VeriSign. Marc Ostrofsky created the Internet Commerce Association.[5]

Awards and Recognition

  • Get Rich Click was #1 on USA TODAY Bestselling books, #1 on the Wall Street Journal Bestselling business books list, #1 on Barnes & Noble as well as #1 Amazon.com in multiple categories.[6]
  • After the success of his book he was appeared on ABC's better TV and News May on CBS. He was also featured on The View.[7]
  • He was called the Technology Wildcatter" in the Houston Business Journal[8]
  • Ms. Ostrofsky purchased a sculpture and then worked with the Mayor of Houston to donate the piece to the City of Houston. It now resides at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Terminal B.
  • He received Entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young.[9]

Meetings and Conferences

He is a professional speakers and regularly speaks domestically and internationally:

  • He was a featured speaker at Yanik Silver's Underground 2011 event.
  • He is currently booked to be a keynote speaker at Affiliate Summit East in August 2011.[10]

Personal Life

Early Life

Marc Ostrofsky was born in Los Angeles, his dad was a professor at UCLA. When he was 5, he ran his own lemonade stand and says "that's the way to learn business as a kid!" He was a major donor to lemonade day, which teaches kids entrepreneurship. Once, his neighbor asked him to clean his car, when he was 7, the neighbor gave him $10 for cleaning his car. After this, he started waxing cars. After a few years, he moved to Houston with his family. He decided to join University of Texas to study BBA.

When he was in College he crossed path with a fellow student, who is one of the most popular Entrepreneurs of America today. He says that his family broker asked Marc to work for their son, who had just started a computer building business in his dorm. Marc refused saying that he would look silly working for a guy two years younger than him. The dorm company grew to become DELL.

Beginning of Work and the Internet Industry

After graduating from college, he landed a national magazine because of his entreprenurial businesses in the college. As a result of this magazine publicity, he received several job offers but refused them because he wanted to do "his own thing". After a while, he found what he was looking for "Telecom deregulation had just happened," Ostrofsky says. "I was walking down the street and met a guy hawking "DISCOUNT LONG DISTANCE SERVICE" on the street. The cards he was handing out claimed the service saved the user 50-70% off of AT&T's prices. I asked him "do you actually get paid for giving this to me? and he said yes, I get 25% of the third month's bill plus $5 for every card I give away. OMG! I had found what I wanted - a serious gold mine!". He went to Dallas and joined the company, after he made several sales, he was made the Sales Manager because of his skills.

His sister Keri inspired him to join the domain industry. His sister became a professor at University of Texas after completing PhD from Harvard. In 1994, Marc went to speak to his sister's class about business and she showed him the "Internet". He came home and searched domain names. After some search he decided to buy business.com. He consulted his father and bought the domain Business.com for $150K. He sold this domain for $7.5million in 1999 and used a lot of money on buying more domains.[11]

On June 29, 2008, he married to Beverle in Aspen, Colorado. He like photography, playing golf and travelling.He has five daughters and currently resides in Houston.[12] His daughters Kelly and Shelly are identical twins, they graduate co-valedictorians of their high school.

Education

He holds a BBA with major in Marketing from the University of Texas.[13]

Publications

He published his first book Get Rich Click in 2011. Mr. Ostrofsky has announced that he is currently working on his next book titled Word of Mouse.[14]

External Links

References