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.

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!