SE Conspiracy

I am a bit of an entrepreneur, some might say. I’ve started numerous companies and built most of them from the ground up. Many companies I built simply because I was told it was “impossible” to do because of technology limitations. I love overcoming those barriers and experiencing the thrill of achieving something that no one else has been able to do yet.

Some of the niches I’ve built companies within include:

• Web Hosting - http://www.imagion.com
• Web Design - http://www.imagion.com/web_design.htm
• Travel - http://www.costaricabeachvacation.com
• Expired Domains - http://www.namecart.com
• Ad Marketplaces - http://www.javvy.com and http://www.linksmile.com
• Technology Consulting - http://www.neosys.net (my bread and butter)
• Search Engine - http://www.neobus.com (crawler and algorithm)
• Shrink The Web - http://www.shrinktheweb.com
• Affiliate Marketing - various niche websites (cash cow)

Doing the Impossible

I built a proprietary technology using Cold Fusion that allowed me to really make a dent in the travel agency web design business by offering low-cost websites with a ton of updated content and services using just one line of code in the page. It was a service ahead of its time. That was the one company that almost made me very wealthy but I had to leave the country (my short bio) and lost everything.

Doing the Impossible Again

Then, I built a proprietary technology to manage text link advertisements -even in HTML pages. It -too- was ahead of its time. Now, Google is trying to stifle competition by “outlawing” text link ad sales. It’s arguable about whether they are being effective or not. From my perspective, it seems all they are doing is changing a little color bar from blue to white (i.e. PageRank isn’t even close to being a reliable indicator of importance). I cover that a little more in another article about my NoFollow Marketplace.

Technology Barriers are Old Hat by Now

Perhaps my own personal crowning achievement was getting Shrink The Web to work. This service is a website thumbnail generator service much like Alexa thumbnails. One difference is that it is free and will remain so. There are now a good many sites popping up and offering thumbnail services. However, I wanted a service that I knew would always be free and I could integrate into Flash, PHP, HTML, or anything I want. I also needed to be sure that the service didn’t disappear like so many other failed attempt fly-by-nights on the Internet. The only solution was to create it myself.

The difficulty in that, though, was that nearly all code written to support such a venture is made to run on the Windows platform. Since I have all Linux servers, that posed a bit of a problem. I also didn’t have the financial means to pay for an expensive Windows server when I have half a dozen dedicated servers sitting around at 2% utilization.

So, I began my quest. I ended up finding a nifty little open source utility called “WebThumb” that is offered for free at boutell.com. The address (to learn more) is: http://www.boutell.com/webthumb/

It didn’t work on my RedHat 4 installation for some reason -even after I installed every requirement. It would almost work but would crash constantly. I don’t know Perl code, but I’m a quick learner and that kind of stuff comes naturally to me. So, after a day or two, I did manage to get it working. The problem was that it kept crashing and seemed to have a memory leak. Now, I’m not saying the code isn’t well-written. It probably is well-written, but I honestly wouldn’t know. As in most cases, the problem most likely is simply the limitless variety of server configurations.

In the end, I decided to write my own variation from scratch. I know PHP really well now that I’ve built so many sites around it, so I chose to write it in that code. After fourteen (14) intense days of coding, I got a working prototype. I must say, I almost gave up on this project. It would’ve been the first project I ever failed to accomplish in all my years of consulting and developing technologies. I thought I had been beaten, but then I had a little breakthrough and the rest -as they say- is history. Once I got it working, I also had the same problems with firefox eating up memory and then crashing the server.

Now that I think about it, I figure that was the original problem -some bug or memory leak with the firefox version; not with WebThumb itself.

In any case, I spent the next several days coding in routines to monitor server health and firefox resources and eventually got a very stable, working version of “ShrinkWeb.” Surprisingly, it not only worked, but my server is running so much better than ever! lol.

My Bread and Butter

For years before I left the US for personal reasons, I made my living off of security and network consulting. I completed projects for bio-pharmaceutical, large telecom, cellular, software, and banking organizations. I was literally at the top of my game. I had achieved certifications such as: CISSP, CCNA, MCSE, MCP+I, MCT, and A+. I won’t go into what those mean, because you might already be drifting off to sleep from this long post! haha.

Suffice it to say that I did very well for myself with consulting and it funded all of my other ventures and developments. Here is my resume‘. Unfortunately, the government has unfairly “branded me” with a scarlett letter otherwise known as a felony. As ridiculous as the charges against me were, they went to great lengths to coerce me and force me to plead guilty. Now, that little piece of paper serves as my death sentence. I am fighting against all odds now in an attempt to change the fate that two crooked cops have given me (my bio).

My Affiliate Marketing Cash Cow

In the end, it was affiliate marketing that got me through the hard times when I was unable -through no fault of my own- to generate a normal income. Like so many others, I turned to the Internet and discovered Internet Marketing. But, unlike so many others, the veil had already been lifted from my eyes and I could see through the lies and deceit surrounding the BIG money claims.

So, I knew who to avoid and I would only buy a program, if I couldn’t figure out what was the gimmick. My sole purpose in buying any program is always to tear it apart and find the flaw or catch. I haven’t looked lately at what’s available, but back in 2003-2004, I know there wasn’t much in the way of honest ebooks/services to help you make money. Mostly, people on the Internet get rich by telling other people “how to get rich”. Hmm.. where have I seen that before??

I started up a couple of websites and spent a lot of time writing quality content to help people decide which insurance to choose, how to fix and build their credit, how to take paid surveys, etc. I employed a variety of marketing tactics to generate traffic (no black hat SEO, though) and I found that the most successful was buying expired domains with existing backlinks (i.e. existing traffic) and also buying links (hard-coded or javascript) in premium spots on related sites.

I went from $0/month income and spending $500/month in advertising to generate more than $10,000/month (i.e. sometimes $700+ per day) in just 3-4 months time! That lasted for about two (2) years, but after more hardship had befallen me, I was unable to manage or maintain my companies for seven (7) months. My companies eventually began to fail. For most of last year, I saw my income drop to just under $1,000 per month. Now after three (3) solid months of rebuilding efforts, my income from affiliate marketing is up to but still only $2,000/month (as of this month) and although that sounds great to many people, it barely covers my business expenses. I still have living expenses to pay, so it’s not really that great.

But, the point of telling you all of that is to let you know that there is potential and there is money out there. You just have to be careful who you choose to listen to and trust before you lose all your money. You gotta find your niche and make your money before you run out. Spending all your dollars, euros, or whatever currency on worthless ebooks or promoted programs will quickly put you in the poor-house.

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