See, I think this question isn't as actionable as you might think it is. It is like saying "Do you know of anyone who dropped out of high school to play professional basketball and made it to the NBA?"

Yes, I do. I still really wouldn't suggest you try it. The countries' stoops and prisons are covered with was-a-sure-thing-to-go-pro. And the Internet has several million sites already hunting for that six figure AdSense check. (While boring little niche websites with subscriber numbers smaller than many people's Facebook friends list can be ramen profitable within weeks or months of launch.)

Excellent point but I think it may still be useful to see a list of profitable sites that don't charge. Perhaps some common patterns can be found and we'd all learn from it.

That said: I mostly agree with you and I think we'll take a look at the list and realize that they're all extremely lucky and/or happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Great response and I agree. I just recently wrote a blog post about how to make money in 2009 with your web startup/app... my advice? Charge people money.. plain and simple

http://www.fortworthstartups.com/2009/01/05/how-to-make-mone...

No matter how I look at it, it seems that every new startup "secretly" believes that somehow they will make money where others have not when using the same model (advertising). At the same time, online advertising is still young and maybe some of these startups will do well in the near future.

Google makes a lot of money advertising. Though you might say there are mostly meta-advertising.

http://esciencenews.com is profitable 7 months after launch, with only some ads on the backend where most users dont see them, and i put the ads there a month ago.

How do you make money? I love the site btw. And love the fact that you can get full text "articles" because you go to research/universities for content.

One that come to mind that might be making a profit: Mint.com

"One that come to mind that might be making a profit: Mint.com"

Mint also gives the managers at Intuit nightmares.

Interestingly enough, the founder of Intuit is actually an adviser to Mint (since before it launched). Similar to to Ellison and Salesforce.com, sans the huge ownership stake.

Doesn't Mint charge its customers?

Yes, Mint does charge its customers, but their customers aren't who you think they are.

They automatically suggest [= scales with no marginal effort] financial products which they claim are good fits for the users (who are not the customers). For example, they might say "You're paying $X in interest a month with your current credit card Y. If you were to switch to credit card Z, you would only be paying $Q, saving you $P a month."

Credit card Z then pays them an affiliate commission for the lead. The issuer of credit card Z is the actual customer.

This is the model I have been using in my app. The goal is to have your vendors/customers be a function and asset of your service, provided to the free user base.

It's really all about extremely targeted but transparent marketing as well as finding interesting ways to utilize user data. The data and its interpretation is what is really valuable, and that is what the customers are paying for. It cant just be simple advertising though, it has to resolve a shared necessity of both customer and user.

PlentyOfFish.com comes to mind because of recent buzz.

Yes! We (LOLapps) fall into this category. Lots of traffic + ads = $$$

Pretty much every web publishing company aims to make money from advertising and yes many do actually make a profit. Perhaps you have not framed your question as intended.

Depends what you class as "startup".

There are millions of websites, making millions from advertising, without charging users.

Hulu.com is making money hand over fist.

Revenue != profit

some businesses that might fit the criteria are LinkedIn, digg (profitable without growth investments), gawker media, and techcrunch

that said, i consider advertisers, investment professionals, and hr recruiters "users"

let's not mix users and customers.

its tricky when users and customers can migrate back and forth between the roles (e.g., linkedin's freemium model)

google :-)

I'm pretty sure they stopped qualifying as a startup at least 5 years ago.