If you throw enough shit against the wall…

…some of its going to stick.

It is the truth and a motto that I have always lived by.

**Note: this is not my normal post where I curse a bunch, post pictures of Michael Gray in a wig, make fun of stupid websites or just ramble for 20 minutes. This is a bit of history of where my lucky ass came from and where I am going.  I have had a bunch of requests from people to give some more information about the process of starting KnowEm & some of the other stuff I have done and been involved in.  You never know where you are going unless you know where you have been.  Below you will find the first post in what will be a series to catch up on what has been going on with me, my companies & where I want to take things. **

Originally I started an online playstation 2 mod chip store back in 2001.  This is what first introduced me into SEO and having to market myself. These were the days that DC hubs were very popular - so I saw a chance to jump onto this bandwagon and make a bit of money.  I became associated with a popular DC hub for trading playstation 2 games. I was made an administrator of the hub and was able to promote my modchip business by adding it to the tag line when people would log in.

This was very profitable - but very illegal. Eventually the DC hub got closed down and a few competing mod chip sites were shut down.  I decided this wasn’t going to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for me so I sold off the rest of my inventory via ebay and was happy with the money I had made.

Late 2004 when torrents began to take off I saw another chance to grow a community. I launched an entirely techno music related torrent site. The site grew & grew quick.  I saw the value in the site & had the idea to start to contact some agencies to see if I could get some DJ’s to do exclusive mixes.  I started doing a “featured dj of the month” on the front page of the site.

Out of the 15 DJ’s we asked, only one declined us.  As my internet family will tell you - I don’t deal with the word “no” very well.

It pissed me off, bad. So I found out when he would be playing a large venue in NYC that I had good connections at -  when they went to book him they wrote in the contract that they would be able to record his entire set & could distribute via any media channel that they wanted as long as the mix was not sold - later that month I had an exclusive mix and was able to use that DJ as a featured DJ.

The site continued to grow and we started to take donations.  Our user base was VERY loyal and through the donations we were able to start another site that was a live streaming site. We featured live shows at night & during the day we played random mix sets from the main site.

I will fully admit I really wish I knew more about monetizing a site back then.  I really had no clue to what I was doing. I let the site fold - donations had dried up and I was actually sick of paying the hosting bills. The radio site lived on for another few months until the donated hosting got pulled.

I stayed away from trying to start anything new - this was now the peak of the torrent scene and the same time that DVD burners finally became reasonably priced - so I started slinging bootleg DVDs. That held me over for a few months, but I wasn’t happy.  I was sick of my job and really didn’t want to work at my fathers office supply store anymore.

A friend of mine had a pretty good job offering at his company so I decided to take it.

I took that job in June of 2005 I married my wife Amy July 24th, after being engaged for a year.

I was laid off from that job on October 1st - the same day I closed on the new house that we had just purchased.

I really had no idea what I was going to do. I stayed unemployed for a few weeks then finally got my ass back in gear and took the job that would change my career forever.

I was checking craigslist and found a job at a local ticket broker for tech support type stuff.  I applied and got the job.

About a year into the job the owner said to me, “Make our website get found on Google.” I started to read a lot.

6 months later we ranked for all of our target phrases & keywords.

I watched the money that this brought in.

I then began to purchase domains and build my own sites.

I enjoy travel, always have.  So I began to make travel related sites and get them to rank.

I was contacted by a head hunter for a position for a “Search Engine Marketer & Optimizer” for an affiliate network in New York City. I took the job and was pushed into the world of payday loans and online dating, simple, eh?

8 Months after I started I had one of our domains ranking top 10 for “payday loans”, “cash advance”, “online loan” & a bunch more terms. (side note: I checked the other day and the site actually still ranks in the first 30 results for a bunch of terms - this is without any work since December 2008)

I went to pubcon in Vegas.

That conference changed my aspect on where I wanted to be.  The last day of pubcon someone who I very much respect said to me, “You’re going to do very well and be successful in this industry, you  just need to bust your ass.”

That is what I did.

I worked the entire bus ride into NYC and the entire ride home. After I had got home & my son was asleep I would continue to work. Building sites, working on client projects with some dude I met from northern NJ. We started to turn a profit & my network of sites were doing very well.

I didn’t stop. I continued, harder.

The payday loan market took a bit of a dump & I was given an ultimatum at work.

I could have stayed, but I had met some awesome people who were doing what I wanted to be doing with my career.

I left the 9-5 (and 1.5 hour commute to NYC) and made the jump.

I will never forget when I read this - I was walking down 8th avenue for the last time - it was when it finally hit me, I was on my own. I now had to hustle hard or loose everything.

The next morning I woke up and looked at my latest project “CheckUsernames.com”. The idea for KnowEm was born.

To be continued…