It's Been Real, Folks

I first got on the ‘net in 1995. I was on AOL beginning in 1994, but they didn’t offer the WWW until later. Some of my really nerdy buddies had installed winsock and connected up under DOS, but I didn’t make the jump until the release of Windows 95, the 32-bit system coming with built-in TCP/IP and socket connectivity.

A lot has happened since then. The internet went from a weird new buzzword to an exalted wonderland. Any tech startups that hinted at their use of the internet were bought up by hysterical investors. This trend continued until late 2000, when reality struck.

The result was that hundreds of businesses that had enjoyed free-flowing investor funds were suddenly stranded when stock prices fell and everyone began pulling out of the now-toxic hi-tech market.

I was flying pretty high myself. I was producing newsletter columns twice a week for Joel Comm for a nice paycheck. In addition, I would periodically run a promo of my own in the newsletter. One month I received around 900 bucks from an affiliate program that paid six bucks per referral for a free service.

Of course, such an insane situation couldn’t possibly last.

This column is a tribute to the stick-to-itiveness of the aforementioned Joel, a good friend with whom I have been associated for the last eleven years.

Joel ran an ad on AOL’s writers’ area in ’94 that caught my attention. He was looking for contributors to a startup that he called WorldVillage, promising nothing but exposure now, money when it began flowing in.

I took the bait.

Eleven years later, I’m still working on the side for Joel. I happen to have a 40-hour-per-week job that I love (sorry, didn’t mean to boast), but I always find time to provide editorial content for Joel’s various ventures.

You see, Joel survived when many others fell. He managed to squeeze a living out of the ‘net when there were dot-com casualties piled up all around him. His business sense tells him what pays and what doesn’t.

That brings me to this announcement: I won’t be cranking out any more Warped.info columns for a while. It just ain’t a smart business model.

My heartiest thanks to those who found this diversion pleasant. And who knows? Maybe we’ll be back.

In the meantime, Joel has seen fit to continue using my humble writing talents in other projects. So stay tuned.