Pixelrage.net

About Pixelrage.net

Tired of lousy internet marketing advice, bad practices and misconstrued SEO rumors? Me too – it was the inspiration for starting this blog. It’s a place where I use my 10+ years of corporate experience in internet marketing, SEO, SEM, advertising and copywriting to put together helpful, real-world articles that help you think and get your job done: regardless of if you’re working in cubicle hell, or are a work-from-home entrepreneur!

I’m Mark, and a good portion of my job is to educate myself on today’s internet marketing practices. I visit popular marketing forums, read RSS feeds from a dozen major internet marketing sites, and converse with other marketers on a DAILY basis. One thing’s for sure – I’ve learned a lot about this field over the years. I know of its history, its present, and its farces – I go out of my way to point out the false rumors and reference the truth.

About Me

I was born on July 26, 1978 in Englewood, NJ. A whole bunch of stuff happened, and I eventually found my way to college in 1996, where I started off as a computer programmer in hopes of getting a job that started off at a cool $90,000/year. The dream was quickly over when I realized how much I actually hated the boredom and monotony of programming, so – I looked for a decent, broad field to get myself into, which became marketing management. Marketing became fascinating to me – it’s a big mix of psychology, sales and creativity rolled up into one.

For some inexplicable reason, I wound up starting my career in 1998 as a graphic designer, doing desktop publishing for an investment management company. It was a fun field, for sure. Fun, but far too competitive and one of the lowest paying careers you could get yourself into, with the most blatant glass ceiling imaginable. Because of these frustrations, I explored the prospect of becoming a full-time marketer, and worked on various marketing communications and promotions.

I acquired my first domain name, GameRaid.com, in 1999 through a long-defunct free domain name registrar called NameZero (they’ve re-organized and started charging standard prices for domains, now). This officially became my first step into the world of domaining, as I continued to add to my collection through the years. Back in those days, everyone registered ridiculous domain names that made no sense. Little did we know that dictionary-word domain names would fetch values into the six figures and above within 10 years :( bummer. NameZero eventually went out of business, and I had to wrestle their acquisition firm to get back the rights to a few of my domains, of which I still own to this very day. My interest in domain names skyrocketed throughout the 2000s. In fact, I bought my 300th domain name in September 2009!

My web design career started off with my own AOL account, back in 1995. In those days, there really was no internet. It was just a big void filled with things called BBS’s, which most likely cost an arm and a leg to “dial in” to per minute using now-archaic technology like Hyperterminal. Nobody really knew what the hell the internet really was or how far it would go at the time, it was simply a place to download crappy JPGs of scantily-clad swimsuit models or crappy DOS-based games. One of the biggest thrills in the 90s was starting your college orientation and learning that you’d get a real e-mail account – wow!

Back on topic – AOL allowed users to have their own web space (if my memory serves correctly, you had a whopping 5 megabytes of disk space to work with), in which I created my own personal home page. One thing I’ll never forget is how I was “blogging” before the term or idea ever really existed. I updated my site with meaningless personal doings on a daily basis. I guess I really missed the boat on monetizing that idea! Even back in those days, I realized the importance of a “search engine friendly URL.” I began to detest my AOL website, and moved on to everything from Geocities, Angelfire, Deja.com, WebJump, Homepage.com and a couple others I can’t remember off-hand. If you’re a 90s computer geek, there’s no doubt that I just blew your mind with that list of retro personal website services. Regardless, I began coding in HTML, and loved it – I moved on to CSS before the whole web 2.0 mania started, and played around with several CMSs like Subdreamer and Joomla.

I started getting serious about affiliate marketing in 2007, when I discovered the eBay and Amazon.com affiliate programs. I had already been involved as a Google AdSense user, but wanted more money (like the rest of the internet marketing population). My total earnings for half of 2007 were about $700 and some change, but that quickly increased to a healthy 5-figure amount the proceeding year in 2008. In ‘09, I beat the hell out of my ‘08 earnings. Things just keep getting better. I’ve learned so much, but feel as though I have so much YET to learn!

I started my own business, ClickOn.Us, in early 2008 (yes, I was able to snag that domain name during the inception of the .US domain extension’s release). I made my business official in January 2009, and registered it as an LLC.

These days, my interests are still pretty basic and obscure: I’m a huge fan of old school video games (especially those from the old NES system) and have a huge collection of game ROMs. Hell, I love anything from the 80s, especially sitcoms, music, retro TV commercials and looking though my stash of toys and baseball cards from back in the day. I still like to “whack a few balls” at the local golf driving range. I try to lift weights every two days. There’s not much to do around here beyond the typical sports bar scene, where I order some of my favorite drinks, including Bass Ale, Newcastle, Sierra Nevada and Stella Artois. Yes, my taste in beer and ale has changed since the great Heiney phase of 2000-2005.

I’m also an art enthusiast, especially in the realm of modern art, surrealism, retro-futurism and abstract art. One of my favorite paintings of all time is Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” I’m a huge fan of vintage Italian liquor and cognac art posters.