Hello, my name is Nick Veneris. For those of you who don't know I am the owner of Xomba.com. It has been awhile since we last chatted. Sure, Kristen writes our official blog twice a week, but I wanted to take a few minutes and communicate directly to all of you.

Believe it or not back in August we celebrated three years online. Imagine that, Xomba has been up and running for over 1,000 days straight.  Absolutely amazing. For those of you who are either; a. not sure how you got here or b. never heard the story of how Xomba began, let me give you a brief history.  I graduated college in 2004 with a B.S. (no jokes please) degree in Communications and a self proclamation to change the whole word.  Yep, that means within months I was stuck in a 9 to 6 job working for about $24,000 a year.

Honestly, I was lucky to have it. I should have appreciated it more, but as a hardheaded young adult I was set on being my own boss.  An age old interest of mine revolves around writing. Unfortunately, I have had major doubts about my abilities as a fiction writer since being laughed at in 7th grade for a short story we had to write and read out loud. <shudder> 

Back to Xomba. While working at my desk I came across an idea that allows people who love to write online the ability to make money on the internet. Sounds like a scam, right? Well, the real scam lies in the fact that out of millions of websites on the internet only a handful let you (legally) earn money from the content that you provide to them.  Guess what? These websites are making money off you and keeping it all. That just doesn't sound fair to me. That's where Xomba  comes in.  All we do at Xomba is share a portion of our advertising revenue with our contributors.  We're not exactly paying you to write in traditional terms, but rather we're partners.  When you post an article (what we call a Xombyte) on Xomba then we become real-life partners. If we make a dollar you make a dollar. No, you aren't going to become rich, but it's fair system that certainly can be rewarding.  The minute you read something that says "How to be rich" realize it is a scam.  Oh and Xomba is completely free.

That's the brief version of how Xomba got its start. Click here for the long version which includes snazzy photos of our whole team, all three of us. If you are still lost then you better read our Getting Started page.

Somehow, we took $10,000 and turned Xomba into one of the biggest ad revenue sharing websites on the net with close to ten million pageviews a month.  I'm not sure how it happened.  It doesn't seem like long ago we were happy to make $100 a day. It has been a surreal trip and it's just starting to get fun. I just love to read about how excited you guys get when you receive your first check. I'm flabbergasted when a user emails us to say they made $1,000 in one month.  Yes, it happens from time to time.  We share those stories over at our testimonial page.

Just recently Google officially linked to us and one of our longtime users got his first book published. Currently, we're interviewing developers and hope to add a new member of our team by November. In the coming weeks, we'll be bringing on a talented public relations firm and launching an advertising campaign. Our purple mascot, Abmox, even got new shirts we'll be giving away soon. 2009 has been a wonderful year for us and we owe it all to you guys. Thank you for standing with us these last three years. Wherever the future takes us we'll be there as a community.  That I can definitely promise.

By the way, over the weekend I was lucky enough to meet Max Brooks, (son of the famous director Mel Brooks) who is a fantastic writer.  While attending a panel he was hosting he offered something that you should all adhere to.  "If you want to be a writer then all you have to do is write".  That doesn't make you a published writer or necessarily a talented one, but the key to becoming a writer is to simply use your imagination and type out words in a logical order. If you contribute to Xomba, congratulations you are a  writer.

Now get writing.

Thank you,

Nick Veneris

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