How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?
kellishaver: Well, my "startup" is not a web site, but a brick & mortar business, so the dynamics are a bit different. The business managed to pay for its own operating expenses from day one, thanks to some careful budgeting on our part. We broke even our first year (making back all of the initial money we had invested in opening, which, again, had been carefully budgeted and kept as low as possible) and started making a profit our second.We just finished our 5th year in business and last year's earnings were down, thanks to the economic problems plauging, well, everyone. We ended up making less than we did in year 4, but only by a very small margin, and it was still more than we had made in year 3, and still profitable.We've been very careful about how we manage finances from day one and given a lot of other local businesses that didn't make it through the year, I'm calling 2009 a success.