Quote:
Originally posted by cj@Feb 15 2005, 03:37 AM
Colin, I think it took a lot of us by surprise & changed our direction LOL
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I was already using gopher when I started college. I was in the physics library and asked the librarian a question about how to get some materials. She told me to go to the new computer cluster and try "Mosaic". "What's Mosaic?", I asked. "It has pictures". "Oh, yeah?!"
Soon enough I found Justin Hall's infamous
http://links.net/ though I think it was on a different domain at the time. In addition to his cooly connected autobiographical ramblings he had links to porn sites and an HTML primer.
I learned HTML and built a homepage called "Colin's World". From there I built a (non-porn) link reviews site and other autobiographical stuff which won awards from Excite and some other sites.
In college I was known as "the guy in the computer lab".
After college I knew I didn't want to go to school anymore. I also knew I wanted to make more money than I would in physics. I took a teaching position while I was applying for jobs because I love teaching and wanted to have that experience. At the same time I started a business submitting the webpages of small businesses to search engines.
I started the business out by spamming 10 million AOL email addresses. I got the email addresses from submitting first and last name combinations at AOLs "search members" page. When I mailed them I didn't know what I was doing and crashed the local ISPs servers. They gave me a call and sternly warned me to have them check over my scripts next time. That was it. A warning and ask for their help next time. Those were the days. I received less than 10 complaints.
Local ISPs were buildings an amazing number of webpages for every business out there hearing about the "information superhighway" for the first time and suddenly realizing they might be left out. I made deals with a number of local ISPs from those AOL emailings to offer our services to their customers for a cut.
The first two customers who contacted me were adult sites. One was dirtyonline.com. I made a deal with one of them that I would drive traffic to his sites for 50% of the sales. He gave me access to his stats and everything. I saw all his traffic stats. It was really easy getting him more traffic. I would find the biggest paysites I could and offer to exchange banners and they would. Most of them didn't have any stats and couldn't evaluate their trades. All they knew was to "trade banners". I put together some really lopsided trades.
I eventually received a job offer from Dean Witter. I turned it down though because I realized I was going to make much more with the search engine submissions and in adult.