Bob Parsons knows something about doing business online. The Go Daddy CEO started Go Daddy in 1997 after he sold his first business, a software company, to Intuit for $64 million.

In the early days, the company that would one day dominate the domain industry had no interest whatsoever in domains. "We tried building intranets, selling other people's hardware, selling other people's software, building large-scale custom Web sites and doing computer education," Bob says in an article that appeared in the April 2009 edition of Playboy magazine. "None of it clicked."

When Bob's developers created the beta version of WebSite Tonight®, a Web site-builder designed to be easy enough for the average person to use, he thought he'd found his cash cow. He figured all he needed to do was sell a million copies via Go Daddy's online store.

So Bob decided to become a domain registrar simply as a way to bring in customers who might then want to buy WebSite Tonight. To sweeten the deal, he offered domain registrations for $8.95/yr – a fraction of what other registrars were charging.

Go Daddy was four years old at the time and – despite cut-rate domain pricing – still not making money. The $32 million that Bob had kept from the sale of his first company (after splitting the purse with his first wife) had by this time dwindled to $8 million.

Then, just when he was about to give up, Bob had an epiphany. He'd flown to Hawaii to think about how to go about closing Go Daddy, when a talk with a valet changed his mind. The guy seemed quite happy with his lot in life, a thought that cheered Bob. If worse came to worse, he thought, I'll just park cars.

"I reasoned that if this all really went south, I could always head out to Nevada and work the bones for a few years until I came up with the next thing. Right then and there I was happy again."

Nine months later, Go Daddy started making money.

"As it turned out," Bob recalls, "the dot-com crash saved us." While other technology companies were going bankrupt, Go Daddy was able to stay afloat. It was operating entirely off Bob's funds, for one thing, so there were no investors to lose.

What's more, as the crash sent online advertisers running, Go Daddy found itself with its pick of good, cheap advertising. "We were one of the few companies still paying its bills," he says, "so we had people lining up to give us incredible ad deals."

Looking back, Bob admits to being surprised at how it all turned out. Once domain sales picked up, his software started selling too. But it was the domain registrations that ended up being the big money-maker. "This thing we thought would be our loss leader was propping up the company."

Today Go Daddy is the most successful Internet domain registrar in the world. In addition to domain registrations and site builders, the company sells shopping carts, site optimizers, SSL security certificates – everything necessary for an average person to create a complete online home business.

Needless to say, Go Daddy's success has made Bob Parsons something of a celebrity. He's been interviewed on ABC's Nightline, Fox Business and The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. He's also been featured in BusinessWeek and Inc. magazines, and quoted in ESPN.com, Advertising Age, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Through the Go Daddy School of Business, Bob makes his experience in creating a hugely successful online business available to everyone.

"You come up with something you think will work, then you put everything you have into it," he advises. "When times get tough you judge what your worst-case scenario is, assume it's going to happen and get back to work. Anything you get on top of that is gravy, baby."