John Horton comes from a retail sales background where he learned the importance of selling, rather than the mere passive offering of a product or service. By 2005 he was disillusioned with the greedy, integrity-lacking, low-reward, corporate world, and was looking for a way to earn a living without the grind of the 9 to 5 and without having to sell his soul. He decided to investigate an e-commerce venture.
John started his first e-commerce website in 2005. Although only a modest success initially, it was the seed of a eureka moment, a blindingly obvious moment that comes only once in a lifetime. If you can start and run a business with virtually no costs (one that once up and running, has virtually no ongoing time commitment), why not make lots of businesses around the same idea?
John now has numerous e-commerce sites as well as other types of web businesses, earning revenue in different ways. John's latest venture is a product comparison website with a unique slant.
It is the low-time commitment model of John's businesses that has allowed him to write books aimed at helping others who want to achieve the same thing. He has published training manuals and books with other publishers on the same subject area and this is his first book for Packt. He is an avid fan of all things open source.
John has no formal, technical, or programming background, had no relevant previous business experience, no related educational qualifications, has never borrowed startup capital, is of average intelligence at best, does not have the gift of the gab or any other magical quality, is not especially "lucky" and would sincerely like to point out that it doesn't matter if you are in the same situation as him!
John works from home and spends his spare time with his family, Jo, Jack, and James, in Norwich, UK and pursues his hobbies of running, computer gaming, and reading.