plentyoffish.com founder, Markus Frind (photo Inc. Magazine)

Markus Frind’s site generates an unbelievable $10 million dollars from Google AdSense a year. “The site pretty much runs itself. Most of the time, I just sit on my ass and watch it.” With all his free time, Frind plays video games, goes skiing, or takes long vacations in Europe.

Markus started his dating site with no money, no plan, and very limited knowledge of how to build a web-based business. In his spare time, while bouncing from one dot-com startup to another, Frind taught himself how to use Microsoft’s free website building tool ASP.net. After about two weeks of work, plentyoffish.com was launched from Frind’s bedroom and hosted on his home computer.

I have to tell you, the site is not attractive. In fact, I scoffed when I first saw it. There is nothing about the homepage that would indicate that was the portal to the world’s largest dating site. But none of that matters. Frind’s site delivers something that lots of people want; online dating that doesn’t cost a thing. And that’s the beauty of it.

Max Chafkin wrote a great front page article about Frind for Inc. Magazine in January. Read it here. I’m going to give you Markus Frind’s three-point action plan for applying his strategy to your own online business.

1. Choose a market where the competition charges for its usage
2. Build a “dead-simple” website that’s free to use (and doesn’t require lots of regular maintenance)
3. Pay for it using Google AdSense

It’s that simple, or so it seems.