This report does not consider large commercially owned websites such as inc.com or entrepreneur.com. Although Inc. and Entrepreneur magazine indeed cover topics for starting an online business, these magazines have hundreds of other topics not relevant to starting or running an on-line business, thus their numbers would’ve distorted the report. (See the Breakdown of the Market)

Despite its saturation, the publishing market for on-line marketers had tremendous growth in 2007. From our estimates, 1,240.19% increase in overall visitors was seen in this market. By tracking the visitors, we can be relatively certain that this growth represents an overall increase in information demand within the on-line business market. It seems more people are becoming increasingly interested in starting or growing an on-line business.

As consumer’s taste demand evermore specialized information, eager entrepreneurs create multiple brands focused on publishing for on-line business owners. This trend, from early 2004 to now, has resulted in an increasingly fragmented market. With this fragmentation, it’s becoming ever more difficult to estimate the exact size of the whole market and the individual market shares.

With the cost of entry and the ever-lower sunk costs, the publishing market for on-line entrepreneurs will, most likely, continue to grow and become increasingly fragmented, unless the current publishers create exclusive arrangements with revenue sources. If exclusive agreements were made this would significantly increase the barriers to entry, thus discouraging competition entering the market.

However, as one firm begins to gain market share, customers will face strong incentives to switch to the leading firm, creating an upward cycle of growth — perhaps giving the leading firm market dominance. If this trend were seen, the cost of entry would be an expensive battle against an established brand.

From the Experts

John Chow attributes his success to his wife, while Darren Rowse, Courtney Tuttle, Joel Comm, and Carlo Cab did not return media requests.

With a link to a picture of his largest Google Adsense check, Jeremy Schoemaker e-mails, “Many people talk about making money online but few quantify it.”

Adam Doolittle contributed to this report.