The judges made their final tallies and have declared Marco Barberini of OvernightPetTags.com our Homepreneur of the Year!

Marco’s vision, story, and growing success stood out from an impressive group of finalists. The 24-year old former gas station employee from a tiny Michigan town began his CityMax.com site in 2006 with no HTML experience. In 2007, he ended up quitting his job to focus on his business and has now tagged over 32,000 pets!

In an interview, Marco said: “A few years ago, my wife Heather and I realized we were tired of working paycheck to paycheck and started focusing on Overnight Pet Tags. We built out our site with CityMax.com and eventually started ranking in the search engines. Our online sales have increased by 100% each year and our dream is to tag every pet in the United States.”

OvernightPetTags.com is currently generating $6,000 - $8,000 in monthly online revenue and, according to Marco, requires only 7 to 10 hours of his time each week.

As Homepreneur of the Year, Marco is the winner of a $10,000 prize package, including a round-trip flight to Vancouver, Canada, three days in a beautiful luxury hotel, the Red Carpet treatment, a day of 1-on-1 expert consultation at CityMax.com HQ, and a complete redesign of his website. He’ll also receive a life-time subscription to CityMax.com for himself and five small businesses of his choosing.

Our two runner-up winners are:
Meredith Patterson (MeredithPatterson.com), an enterprising musical theatre and TV actress who has appeared on All My Children.

Michael and Mary Ferrari (UnusualThreads.com), a retired couple who are generating millions of dollars annually with their online celebrity fashions business.

Our runner-ups will each receive a custom redesign and website makeover ($1,000 value), plus a lifetime subscription to CityMax.com for themselves and three small businesses of their choosing.

Congratulations again to all of our inspiring winners!

If you know someone you’d like to nominate for Homepreneur of the Year (online home-based business, please email homepreneur@citymax.com.

On Wednesday, we were lucky to talk to best-selling author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Courtesy of Lindsay Smith and the F5 Expo team, Gladwell telecommuted into a posh Vancouver lounge. There, local tech heads and entrepreneurs gathered to pepper him with questions in anticipation of his April appearance in Vancouver.

Here is some of the CityMax.com team at F5 Expo’s launch party!

As an expert of social sciences, Gladwell has brought us such gems as The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. His stories inspire and compel, while allowing us to draw parallels to our own everyday lives.

We highly recommend reading his articles in the New Yorker - here are a few of our favorites:

• In the Air: Who says big ideas are rare?
• Priced to Sell: Is free the future?
• The Coolhunt

Whew!

Last week was a very busy one with members of our website builder team heading both to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2010 and Miami for Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Summit. We met hundreds of great affiliates, networks, resellers and marketers and returned home charged and ready to go.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at ASW 2010. To the old friends and new faces it was good to see/meet you all: Brandon Delgrosso and Jared Sidwell (DOBA), Mindy Brown and Carol-Lyn Jardine (LinkTrust), Gillian Muessig (SEOMoz.org), John Chow (JohnChow.com), Deborah Carney and Liz Ababon (TeamLoxly.com), and Alison Stewart (plus the rest of the RevenueWire crew) - just to drop a few names. Both conferences were packed and we picked up more than few marketing tips to share with you entrepreneurs out there.

Highlights!
A favorite ASW booth of ours was MarketLeverage. They gave away free hamburgers in exchange for business cards – see the pic! To wrap up ASW, our own Patrick Schrodt even won an awesome remote controlled car from the nice folks at LinkTrust.

Here are a few photos of the Las Vegas fun – and yes that’s 90s rapping legend Flava Flav…

It’s just nine days until we launch our website builder affiliate program at Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas! From January 17-19, our team will be at the CityMax.com booth (#404) at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas, giving our affiliates the gold treatment and offering a chance to win a grand prize worth $100,000.

Our new program will allow the very best affiliates to promote a ‘White-hat” product offering for both the money-making online crowd and the mass market home business owner. Our one promise for Affiliates is this: We will treat you like gold!

To learn more about our affiliate program and our Affiliate Summit West 2010 promotion, visit our CityMax.com at Affiliate Summit West website, or get in touch with our Affiliate Ambassador, Kyle Murphy, at 1.866.310.9327 ext.146.

The polls are closed and the votes are in! Time to tally them up and find out our Homepreneur of the Year…

Thank you everyone for sending in your emails, Tweets and even snail mail! We received hundreds of votes and messages of support for our intrepid finalists.

Later this month, we will announce the grand prize winner, who will be flown to Vancouver, Canada for the full red carpet treatment and a complete website redesign package!

The judging panel has a challenging decision ahead of them to determine the winner. They will be taking each of the following criteria into account:

• innovation and originality
• entrepreneurial ‘spirit’
• revenues generated through home-based business
• prior experience and success
• business sustainability and scope
• electronic votes via Twitter/email

Stay tuned to find out who the winner is, and congratulations again to all of our truly inspiring finalists!

At this time of year, the nights are colder and most of us get a chance to spend time inside with family and friends, celebrating the joy of the season.

It only takes a quick look at Vancouver’s Downtown East Side to see that there are a lot of people that aren’t quite as lucky – it’s a strong reminder that we have a lot to be thankful for!

For the second year in a row, we partnered up with a local group to assemble and hand out bags of supplies to those in our community. Each bag held simple things, like snacks, a winter hat, socks, and gloves and although it’s not a lot, we hope that we helped make the night a little bit warmer.

Here are a few pics from the event, courtesy of Frank Lee.

Looking for a “white hat” product for your affiliate portfolio? Good news! We’re stepping into the game and have now launched our own website builder affiliate program!

Our official website builder affiliate program debut will be at the Affiliate Summit West 2010 conference in Las Vegas. With multiple payment platforms, aggressive payouts, and a great product, there’s a perfect option for almost every affiliate marketer. From January 17-19, you’ll find our team at the CityMax.com booth at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas, treating our affiliates like gold and offering up great giveaways and a chance to win a grand prize package worth $100,000!

While we are officially debuting at Affiliate Summit West, we are currently accepting a limited number of affiliates. To learn more about our affiliate program and our Affiliate Summit West 2010 promotion, visit our CityMax.com at Affiliate Summit West website, or feel free to contact our very own Affiliate Ambassador, Kyle Murphy (1.866.310.9327 ext.146).

Presenting the finalists for 2009 Homepreneur of the Year! We were overwhelmed by the amount of amazing entries, and thank you all for your submissions. You have some truly incredible small business website success stories and made it hard to pick just eight finalists!

From the Pet Tag Prince to Grandma Cuddles, these finalists come in all shapes, sizes, and ages! Now it’s up to you. Check out their stories on the voting page and help us choose who should be the Homepreneur (home-based business owner) of the Year!

Last night, BCBusiness Magazine hosted a gala dinner to announce their picks for the 2009 Best Companies to Work for in BC, and CityMax.com placed 2nd for companies with under 100 employees!

The criteria for the Best Companies to Work for in BC is an organizational-wide employee survey measuring satisfaction in key areas, including leadership, work culture, and employee engagement. The data is compiled by BCBusiness Magazine and MindField Group to determine the winner.

“We are very pleased to be named the second Best Company to Work for in BC,” said Dean Gagnon, our Chief Evangelist and President. “One of the goals in our Painted Picture is to make CityMax.com the best, most fun and healthiest workplace in the world. This extraordinary achievement is a direct result of the tremendous efforts from our entire team.”

In the words of BCBusiness Magazine:

“There’s a fine line between work and play at CityMax.com, and staff and management wouldn’t have it any other way. The decade-old website builder’s bright and airy Gastown office is filled with whimsical touches motivating the mostly 20- and 30-somethings clicking away in casual open-concept pods. For added incentive, there’s the six-foot MVP trophy, the Wheel of Fortune laden with possible prizes and the candy jar stuffed with lottery-style tickets…”

Read more: http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/sponsored/best-companies-2009/2009/12/03/citymaxcom#ixzz0Xzf5G2i4

Here are a few photos from the event!

Huge congrats to all the other Best Companies, both in the under 100 and over 100 employee categories! Keep up the good work!

We just received exciting news from CityMax.com Chief Evangelist and President Dean Gagnon that Milun Tesovic, 24-year old founder of metroLeap Media, was named the winner of the 2009 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA) in Kansas City, Missouri capping Global Entrepreneurship Week!

Dean Gagnon, CityMax.com Chief Evangelist and President made the trip down and was one of the awards judges who selected Tesovic as the winner. He explained how Milun blew away the field: “From his initial concept to becoming a real player in the business, Milun’s small business has skyrocketed in just 3 years to become a global leader. His website company reminds me of our own efforts at CityMax.com - a maturity and vision that left us awestruck and showed that entrepreneurs can succeed at any age.”

Tesovic defeated 32 contestants from around the world to take the premier award for students that own and run a business while attending a college or university. His online property, metroLyrics, is currently the 3^rd largest music website in the world. He continues to evolve the company’s flagship product, MetroLyrics with innovative lyrics applications and services that appeal to the sites 35 million unique monthly visitors, maintaining its position as the 3rd largest music website worldwide.

GSEA, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) program, has attracted top entrepreneurs from universities around the world since 1998. Hosted by the Kauffman Foundation, applicants are selected to compete against their peers by presenting their businesses to a panel of judges comprised of EO members, business luminaries and renowned national business journalists. As the 2009 winner, Tesovic will receive $150,000 in cash and prizes, including access to EO’s global network and thousands of dollars in donated business resources and services. Congratulations Milun on all your amazing work!