From the New York Times (permalinked):

MARKUS FRIND, a 29-year-old Web entrepreneur, has not read the best seller “The 4-Hour Workweek” — in fact, he had not heard of it when asked last week — but his face could go on the book’s cover. He developed software for his online dating site, Plenty of Fish, that operates almost completely on autopilot, leaving Mr. Frind plenty of free time. On average, he puts in about a 10-hour workweek.

Markus Frind, at the Vancouver Aquarium, operates his dating Web site out of his apartment. But for the most part, the site, Plenty of Fish, runs itself.

For anyone inclined to daydream about a Web business that would all but run itself, two other details may be of interest: Mr. Frind operates the business out of his apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he says he has net profits of about $10 million a year. Given his site’s profitable advertising mix and independently verified traffic volume, the figure sounds about right.

There’s much to be admired in Mr. Frind’s entrepreneurial success. But his site, now almost five years old, has some unfinished patches and irritating quirks and seems to come from the Anti-Perfectionist School of Design.

He might put in 10 hours a week now, but he was probably putting in more like 60 hours a week while he was building and marketing to the site to where it is now.

agree, it is not easy to get a new site from ground up to success and remain there for a long period of time without doing much to it, especially he is in a rather competitive sector where there are lots of large competitors around.

Otherwise, he is among one of those lucky ones

From the little I know of Markus Frind it sounds like he worked really hard for a few years building up his site and learning as much as he could on the way to making it better.

There are old threads on Webmasterworld where he talks about only making a few dollars a day and looking for ways to improve that. He's not an instant success story, but one of hard work and patience.

Hey,
He was in it a long time....However good to hear someone starting from nothing and working his way up in the world! Show you that anyone can do it if they put there head to it!

Kev