Back in the beginning or what I refer to as the early years of the web, we experienced a huge influx of business, partly because of being early adopters.

This journey we talk about and share was somewhat adventurous and brings to the forefront that one of the main reasons we ventured onto the web was the simple fact of being able to market to our prospects and existing clients in the State of Alaska.

Up until this point the farthest reach we had was Alaska and had yet to penetrate all the tiny markets in this huge region.

With this transition also brought the reality that it would take a few years for many of these communities to come online and be able to find us on the web.

Technology was slow, sluggish and very frustrating at times. On two occasions a tech spent half a day working to get my Mac connected to the ISP. Now a days we connect automatically or in less than minute.

In one city we moved to they had to send three service techs out to install and setup a 115k ISDN modem. I later learned that we were the first residential customer to receive this ‘fast connection’.

This was a time of adventure and I will readily admit, it was just that and more. DoubleClick was charging rates for banner ads that were up in the stratosphere. Google was just birthed but in its infancy, and pay-per-click was still a child.

And we were still maintaining top positions on all the search engines. Being early adopters we built and built and built, to the point that our site had over 250 pages of content on it.

We went through three webmasters, which I’m sure is a small number compared to what many businesses had to deal with. One thing was for sure…we knew we had the cat by the tail and weren’t going to let go. The wild ride was just beginning and continued for six more years.

For more on how the pioneers ventured through the land of clicks, modems, html and email, go to Secrets of the Tiny Store and find out the rest of the story.

To your success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher