Just over a year ago (infact, a year yesterday) I wrote about my previous experiences with my previous website and that although I was not scammed as such, I was affected by an online scammer. Many people would expect that experience to put me off working with other people, especially online, however I was speaking today to Joseph Ajilore and we noted that some of the most successful people/companies not just in recent times but during history (this is especially shown through the amount of family businesses there are and have always been).

Most of you will have heard of, and perhaps played, the ‘MMORPG’ Runescape. This was created by two brothers, Andrew and Paul Gower. They started this while they were Cambridge undergraduates and operated out of their parent’s house once it was released as a beta on the 4th of January 2001 (wait.. that is just 9 years ago!). They now hold many awards and are featured in the Guinness World Records as the world’s most popular free MMORPG.

Sergery and Larry. Do I really need to say more than that? These two intelligent men met at Stanford and after they got their degree they started BackRub. Just 15 years later and they are global superstars and the proud founders of Google. Would either of them have been able to manage it on their own? Who knows!

One of the most well known online collaborations, especially in the blogging circle, is Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett‘s book ‘ProBlogger Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income’. Now, rather than explaining that they met online and wrote a book et cetera, I decided to ask Darren what made him know that Chris was to be trusted, his answer was somewhat suprising to me!

“To be honest I’m not even sure why I trusted him – I guess we’d just been interacting for a little while, swapping emails, he’d done some guest posts – it was just a natural thing to go further and work together. All I can really advise is for people to approach virtual relationships as any other kind of relationship. Be genuine, don’t rush things, look for synergies and let it naturally progress.”

Darren Rowse

Three types of collaboration, each successful and I expect resulting in lifelong friendships. I was planning on writing something about the best way to start an online relationship but Darren managed to do it for me, and what better way than for one of the featured people to give their own tips?