In Oct 2003, I took the time to write a Web Services module and placed it on my business website. The WSDL module was written for use in the verification of a certain piece of information that every Singaporean and PR have.
I've noticed a lot of companies accessing it. In fact, I've noticed non-Singapore companies from overseas accessing it also. Why they were using it, was something beyond my comprehension.
I originally allowed everyone to access the Web Services module and I had in fact advertised it at xmethods, a WSDL directory. After that, I've noticed a sharp spike in arrivals to my website, mostly using the Web Services module I've written.
A few months later, I followed up with a Web Services article on the business website, and noted that a few companies have declared that they have Web Services on their sites too, however, these Web Services were not available to the general public.
Since my business website was (and still is) hosted by myself, and the entire infrastructure setup by myself also, I decided to follow the advice of my article, and modified the Web Services module to require a user id and password before verification of the information. This particular requirement caused all the accesses to my Web Services module to fail, because the requirement was not there before. I also added a message, such that when the failure occured, the client program would get a message that in order to access the module, they had to possess a user id and password. The user id and password can be obtained by contacting me. The point for it was, I wanted to make money out of it. For every access, I would charge, say, 5 cents for it. This would allow the running of the business website to be paid for by users accessing the website's business services.
Overnight, accesses to the Web Services module dropped down nearly to zero, which was exactly what I wanted. Either the Web Services module users pay to get the service, or they bugger off.
Prior to the setting up of my own business, I had not much exposure to the running of a business system. The design, development, deployment and provision of the Web Services module was a hard lesson learnt in providing business information. My degree is in Information Systems, and my expertise in software development, systems administration, infrastructure design and implementation, which I learnt when I was the manager and involved in the day to day operations and running of a data center for 3 years.