Reptile Web Site Breaks 1 Million Visitors Per Month

APR 7, 2000, - AUSTIN, Tx. --OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc.,a privately held corporation, announced today that its reptile and amphibian web community kingsnake.com (http://www.kingsnake.com) has passed the 1 million visitors per month mark. The successful kingsnake.com site, the internets largest community of reptile and amphibian hobbyists, contains over a hundred message boards, classified ads, streaming audio web casts, and hosts over 400 business web sites in the rapidly growing reptile and amphibian pet industry.

"Our data indicates that in the month of March 2000 we tracked over 1.2 million visitors on our web site, almost doubling our traffic from December of 1999" said OnlineHobbyist.com President Jeff Barringer. "We continue to see enormous increases in our traffic each month which is amazing considering our advertising budget for 1999 was only $400.00"

In true guerilla start-up fashion, OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc.,owners of the kingsnake.com web site, still operate the business from living rooms and garages. "This started as a hobby in 1994 and evolved into a business. Since then our growth has been enormous. We now see almost 40,000 visitors a day".

kingsnake.com was ranked 8020 most popular web site (based on unique visits over a six month period) by Alexa Internet (http://www.alexa.com), a free and independent Web navigation service which tracks website activity around the globe and collates information from Internet users.

In February the independent web analysis firm PCData Online (http://www.pcdata.com) ranked kingsnake.com at 7519 in popularity among the literally millions of web sites on the internet. PCData Online tracks Internet traffic to web sites and conducts custom polls and studies through its sample population of home Internet users.

Both rankings place the kingsnake.com site within the top 1% most popular web sites on the internet. kingsnake.com was ranked the 5th most popular pet site by Go2NET's 100HOT web popularity guide (http://100hot.com/directory/home/pets.html), ahead of such pet industry heavyweights as Pets.com and PetStore.com.

Like many other dot com's OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc.,has struggled against enormous odds, including a lack of funding. Un-like many other dot com's they built the business without outside investment."In 1999 we shopped our business plan around to a variety of venture capital firms and angel investors but we were unable to secure any capital. They either didn't understand our business, it didn't fit their model, we needed too much money, we didn't need enough money,it was always something. Meanwhile we built, and will continue to build, our business the old fashioned way, based on revenues.While this has throttled our ability to add features and services and expand intoother marketplaces, it has not slowed our traffic growth. We continue to add new vendors and users on a daily basis. When larger dot com's such as Dr.Koop and others run out of money they'll get no sympathy from me. We didn't have any capital when we started, we don't have any capital now, but we've survived 4 years" saidJeff Barringer.

One of kingsnake.com's vendors, commercial live insect vendor New York Worms has seen its fortunes grow along with the kingsnake.com web site. "We were early vendors and believers in the kingsnake.com site and we have literally built our online business around its user base" said Carlton Smith, one of the owners of New York Worms.

Amazon Reptile Center owner Scott Solar agrees. "When we opened our retail pet center in Montclair, California last year and wanted to launch our web site we knew that by hosting it at kingsnake.com we would immediately see traffic.When we launched the site we sold so much product we almost didn't have enough left for the retail facility".

In March 2000 OnlineHobbyist.com, expanded its web community presence by launching a new series of pet communities under the name of PetHobbyist (http://www.pethobbyist.com) with each segment of the pet hobby receiving its own community.

OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc. (http://www.onlinehobbyist.com) is a privately held company formed in 1999,based on the success of the former kingsnake.com publications, to build web based communities of hobbyists. Headquarters are in Austin, Texas, USA.
OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc. web communities include:             http://www.PetHobbyist.com
http://www.kingsnake.com
http://www.BirdHobbyist.com             http://www.AquariumHobbyist.com             http://www.InsectHobbyist.com             http://www.CritterHobbyist.com
http://www.DogHobbyist.com
http://www.CatHobbyist.com
http://www.ExoticHobbyist.com
http://www.HorseHobbyist.com
http://www.KitHobbyist.com

CONTACT: Jeff Barringer, President
and CEO, OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc.
Tel: +1 512 990 1092
E-Mail: jeffb@kingsnake.com
URL: http://www.onlinehobbyist.com

CONTACT: Carlton Smith, President,
New York Worms.
Tel: +1 516 759-3538
E-Mail: info@nyworms.com
URL: http://www.nyworms.com

CONTACT: Scott Solar, President,
Amazon Reptile Center.
Tel: +1 909 447-5103
E-Mail: scott@amazonreptile.com
URL: http://www.amazonreptile.com