In 2004, former international financier and mother of two Faten Hodroge pursued her dream of starting a business, 100% her own. Montreal-based Oya Costumes in now one of the leading specialty Internet costumes businesses in North America, with revenues continuing to double year over year.

While their largest competitor, a US company backed by a large multinational, has over 200 full-time employees, Oya Costumes has been able to remain competitive with just Faten, three full-time employees supported by a team of part timers, and a network of virtual workers located around the world thanks to the Internet. "Some people think we might not be able to compete with Wal-Mart and Zellers and Target, but we're able to offer a far better selection and a broader range of product than any of those companies. We've found a niche on the Internet." While Oya Costumes has seen as much as 50% of their business come from outside Canada, more recently they have been focusing closer to home.

Their website is available in both English and French, and they have delivered costumes as far away as Iqaluit, Nunavut. "Suddenly, someone from Iqaluit can order a costume online and have it delivered," says Faten. "We put Canada first and the internet enables us to reach virtually every Canadian household." Now, 80% of their business comes from across Canada from every province and region. One thing Faten notes is that there are not a lot of great web businesses in Canada. "Canadians like to buy from Canadian companies. There should be lots of good companies coming up and finding opportunities and niches."

Gap Adventures began organizing exhilarating tours of the world’s less travelled locales in 1990, but it wasn’t until 2002, when the company first began using Google AdWords that international business really took off.

Since then, the company has seen 2.5 million queries from online ads generated by Google AdWords. These queries have come from 163 countries, including places as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan to those much closer to home in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. It’s little wonder GAP Adventures has been able to arrange for more resources to be put into online consumer outreach. The ROI speaks for itself — the company has seen annual growth rates of 20 to 40 per cent. And according to the company, Google provides unparalleled transparency in metrics, so there’s never any guess work when it comes to tracking the effectiveness of a campaign or click-through trends.

Advanced web hosting solutions such as Dedicated Server Hosting, is one of the most aggressive markets on the Internet. Competition is fierce and maximizing marketing investments is essential to being at the forefront in this space and, obviously, staying profitable. Google AdWords allows us not only to target our ideal customers, but to target them at the most crucial of moments, when they are searching for our services. With all the tools and support that Google is providing, we are able manage and control this big machine that generates new customers everyday.

- Martin Leclair and Eric Chouinard, founders

Biztree’s relationship with Google started in early 2003. We had just taken a loan of $25,000 to invest in advertising and we spread it across 7 channels including affiliate programs, mass email, forum advertising, content and search advertising. After 30 days we lost all our money in all channels – except one. The small investment we made in Google search returned almost 3 times our investment!

I don't know how I even imagined the idea to create my own website because I have no experience in this area. I have friends who are programmers and website developers but somehow I had a sense that with the right templates I could create my own website. That is when I found Yola. 

Yola allowed me the opportunity to choose among many different templates and options to create the kind of "feel" for my own unique website. I realized it was possible to create a beautiful website completely on my own, completely free with options to upgrade. It took almost no time at all to learn how to use its many features and through the variety of other linkages--e.g, piknic for photo editing and the google forms, I was also able to add widgets that extended what I could do beyond what I could have imagined. It was fun! Furthermore I love that I have complete control over editing and don't have to wait for a website developer to make changes for me. I have had wonderful feedback about my website from clients and it has extended my presence in the business world significantly. Now when people ask me whether I have a website, I can proudly say, "Yes, I do--in fact I have four." 

--Susan MacRae, owner