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Some personal background to get us started.
My web sites have been earning income for several years now. More recently, I got a little more serious and devloping these sites.
Okay. Let me back way up. How about a little history on me so you don't think I am a 12 year old living in a basement in some third world country. You might be able to relate to me better if you know more about my business and technology background.
I was finishing up a business administration degree (concentrated in management of information systems or MIS) while the internet was starting to be noticed by the general population. This was sometime around 1993 or 1994. Granted by 1996 when I said "web site" to the average person older than 30 they just stared at me blankly.
While going to school, I was working for a one-man-web-programming company who hired programmers located in China. My job was to talk with various online companies and find out what types of programming they needed and then communicate this to the programmers. I also tested software that was being developed. The guy I worked for was based in San Francisco California and I was an hour north in the Sonoma wine country. I only met my boss one time in person. This is a whole other story about a meeting with cigar smoking Victoria's Secret models I will not go into :-)
I worked for this company part-time before graduating from college. Being overly practical with plenty of student loan debt and a mortgage I decided I should get a real job once I graduated (not the web-based sit-at-home-in-your-underwear variety).
I went to work for a real estate company that developed and managed shopping centers. I was the systems administrator. I had no systems admin experience but I broke and fixed many PCs and had made a few web sites. I quickly learned all about Novell Netware and soon replaced my boss and fired our consultants and supported the technology for the entire company on my own. I installed our first Windows server and we even had something called a PICK (an operating system) server that I was always trying to keep alive. I created some web sites, supported users, managed the network and provided company-wide software/hardware support etc. More than one person probably should do alone.
I changed jobs 3 years later and worked for a specialty industrial printing company where I created 3 different web sites. One of these was a sql database driven e-commerce site where I processed customer orders online. I managed users, the network, all of the company software for accounting, created reports etc.
After that I got pretty cocky and a little worn out from all the breadth of my responsibilities. I went to work for an Internet startup that was in the search engine space. Again, some CRAZY stories of foreign programmers, angel investors and other stuff. Here I realy sunk my teeth into Linux administration, search engines, and online income generation. Granted I was not the brains behind the operation but I picked up quite a bit and when all of the other technology staff was let go to save money I finally gave in and moved on before the ship went down. I worked at the Internet startup for a few years until just after the dot come bubble burst.
I jumped ship and headed for the government sector because it was tough finding a good tech job in that location during those few years. At this government job (which I will never do again) I taught myself all about content managment systems and setup my first personalized intranet. Each department had their own personalized view of their web site content which they created themselved without any HTML knowledge.
Now I own my own business with my wife in the horse training and marketing area. We are the most technically advanced horse training and marketing business you may ever find. I have taken all of my skills in web development/programming, search engine marketing, photography and graphic design (I used to be an award-winning commercial photographer before digital), and videography and rolled them together into this new business.
I also develop various online properties to generate revenue and I consult with small businesses who want to develop cutting edge web sites and market their products and services online.
Increasing traffic to our web site