My First Time
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Yesterday I received a ‘direct tweet’ from my good friend Dr. Mani. A tweet is a message on Twitter, a direct tweet is a message that only the recipient can read. You can follow me on Twitter by clicking here.
Anyway, Dr. Mani asked me about my ‘first time’. I had to read that message twice, but what he meant was:
Do you remember your FIRST WEBSITE?
Ahhh, okay! Just to be sure we communicated on the same level, Dr. Mani gave an example of his first time to make it perfectly clear what his intentions were.
YES, I DO remember my first website. It was back in 1998.
At that time I was advising the owner of a huge pottery in- and export company how to streamline his business and I thought it would be a nice idea to put some of his products online, so I could learn how to use the Internet.
It was a B2B site. It sold sea containers loaded with pottery to large garden centers. The main problem was, that only one container full of goods would cost over $15,000 and people don’t spend that much money online. At least, they didn’t back then. So we had to follow up and meet prospects in person to make the sale.
Nevertheless, I managed to build a list of over 6,500 subscribers from all over the world. And yes, we sold a couple of container loads.
My first sale however, came from a competitor. After discovering my first time website, he phoned me, saying he still had some pottery in Miami harbor and asked me if I could sell it for him.
I did! That’s how I earned my first $ 1,500 online!
Where did I host it?
This site was hosted on Hypermart. At that time, it was free and came with ads. Hypermart was a success back then, but started charging for hosting. Because this was just an experiment and I had my own sites hosted elsewhere, I dropped the site.
How did it look?
Ugly! Amateurish! I think the pictures did the job, since the site offered unique products at bottom prices.
See for yourself in the way-back machine.
How did I feel about creating it?
Excited! This was my experiment to make an online presence. And I liked it so much, that I went online almost full time. I still have my offline businesses to attend, but the kick I got from operating from my little office at home really got me going.
That’s my First Time story!
Now… YOU.
Here’s what to do.
1. Post to your blog with your “first time” story.
2. Link to this post somewhere in yours.
3. Tag someone you know, invite them to write about their “first time”.
4. If you’re on Twitter, tweet a link to your blog post – and use #myfirstweb to make it easy to find and list all tweets on the topic
After a week or two, we’ll compile a list of all these posts – and it will be fun to see how we all evolved in our journey through the Web!
Looking forward to seeing your “first time” story soon.
If you have any comments, post them below.
EDIT: Just after publishing this post, I tagged my friend Willie Crawford. As usual, Willie responded immediately: Remembering MY First Time… So Long Ago!
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I had completely forgotten about hypermart until I read this article. Never hosted there but remember trying to create something that wasn’t entirely offensive to the eyes. Never did manage to pull it off.
My first webpage was a small website about panoramic photography, domain that I was very interested (I still am after 15 years). Unfortunately, that website doesn’t exist anymore.
michael
It’s really fun to look back on these. I had to do some thinking to remember my first time. It was a consulting site that I put up in 1998.
Since you tagged me in Twitter, I’ll post about it on my blog.
My first website, was actually based on a game, i was trying to build up a fan community, as usually it was hosting on geocities at that time, free.
http://www.dogarthritiscare.com
[...] Case Stevens hit me, also on [...]
My first website was abou 10 years ago when I started my degree in coputing. The site was actually for myself as I wanted to advertrise my web design skills. Ofcourse it was tacky and horrible by todays standards. Although I do not have a copy of it now I remember exactly how it looked.
Pretty interesting. I just started my first blog. I’m not sure which direction it’s going to go yet, but reading your story gives me some ideas. That web archive thing is pretty sweet too. The internet sure has come along way.
http://ethanellers.blogspot.com
Fun read. It’s amazing how far we’ve all come along since our humble beginnings on the web.
http://www.eporiaecommerce.com
Your post is indeed very informative. These days not only amateur webmasters are doing internet marketing but also young grad students are promoting their less professional sites as their practice and projects. Articles on starting an internet marketing business are available on the internet easily.
My first website was for an online game I was playing years ago. It never really took off and over time I became bored of it.
http://www.dbzstream.net