My first (successful) web venture was “Internet Business Builders” (ibbltd.com) but there is no archive I can find of it anywhere.  It went online in 1997.  I simple sold website design, and it was easily successful since almost NO BUSINESSES had websites yet back then.

However, here are some of the websites from LONG AGO.  Most from 1999…  Actually it is really all a part of one website, PIYB but the domains were different — it was a network…

(note: some of the links on the sites still work, so it is fun to see what is there!)

This was the ULTIMATE AD CAMPAIGN, a product sold through a (very successful) network I had developed called “The People in Your Brain“.

Here is DOMAIN-X a domain name exchange.  These are very successful now, but back then — the web was still young.  But, as I had expected back in 1999, the .com has become the “new real estate” with domain names selling for over FIVE MILLION DOLLARS!  Geez, I was so ahead of my time… lol!

Here is a national print ad co-op I had created.  I knew you could use the power of the internet to SHARE common advertising.  This today is seen on TV…  Have you ever seen one of those generic commercials “I made money at this website”.  They literally say “this website” because a bunch of websites SHARE the commercial and when you go to the domain name, you get one of the co-op sites.  Whoda thunk I had this model in place in 1999!

PIYB EVOLUTION -> PIYB DESTRUCTION

Here you can see my first real web-baby, PIYB (People in Your Brain) grow, evolve, and eventually crash-and-burn.

• Original, Jan 1999
• After Growth, April 1999
• 2nd Generation, Nov 1999

We stop temporarily at Gen2 because this is where PIYB really took off.  In its prime it was making a WHOPPING $3000 PER DAY.  Notice I don’t say I was making this money, because as you will learn, the unscrupulous “Card Service International (CSI)” would KEEP ALL OUR MONEY!

At PIYB Gen 2 you will see the bread-and-butter.

Classified-X was a classified ad exchange and was built on my belief that classified type ads work better than conventional banner ads.  Later a company called Google would come along and prove this point.  BTW, this was my first official SOFTWARE development.

I also realized that many people could use a simple, web-based email because pop3 email at the time was confusing and difficult.  Later a service called “Hotmail” would revolutionize the world of email.

PIYB also included something new at the time “Search Engine Submission” and “Search Engine Optimization”.  Search Engine Optimization, what is that!?  This NEVER BEFORE HEARD OF TERM was a PIYB original!  At PIYB we would optimize your website to get a better listing on the popular search engines.  A concept that is now the HOTTEST thing in online marketing.  Of course, at the time we were worried about the huge players like Excite.com and Hotbot.com, WebCrawler.com, even DogPile.com…  Google?  Who cared that was just some experiment…!!

But, sadly in early 2000, THIS became the PIYB homepage.  What happened you ask?  Well, our credit card processing company, CSI, was supposed to take payment and then transfer it into our bank account.  They decided instead to KEEP the money.  Ok, not keep it, just HOLD IT INDEFINITELY!

Yes, we went to lawyers, yes we fought with them…  No, we never saw the money.  I should say we did see some money at the beginning (which allowed us to hire a staff that worked from our apartment) but once the income became very large, CSI got scared by this “new internet thing” and decided that for their protection it was best to keep the money.  We would later find out that we were far from the only startup that had this problem.

So, we contacted our customers and told them to CHARGE BACK THEIR CARDS.  And, request refunds.  Since this is the only way to keep CSI from keeping the money.  They still had to honor refunds and chargebacks.

Next time I will post about YourICC.  A “radical new” search engine in the year 2000 that introduced crazy new concepts like Pay Per Visitor advertising (or what the web would come to call Pay Per Click), search keyword target advertising…  Even some really new concepts like the ability for people to show our search results on THEIR website to earn commissions!