David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

I thought I'd post a bit about my progression in web development as part of a November "1 year old" special! The 1 year mark is on the 27th November 2007 and from now until then I want to provide a bit more background information about me, a bit about the project progress so far and a bit about the future.

Today's topic is about web development.
 
I started building websites in 2000. My first website was for my boss at the time and was built in FrontPage. Back then, I knew nothing really about web design. I could upload via FTP. FrontPage gave me SEO friendly URL's as well as a pre-designed theme. In today's terms, it wasn't really "design" - but I did get paid for it.

I then started to learn HTML properly and dabbled in JavaScript. I remember starting a database of Universities around the country in JavaScript (that was before I realised UCAS already had one).

The next hobble was hosted on free Lycos Tripod webspace. It was a personal blog type site and was read by family mainly. Howver, a few affiliate links were added and I made a few quid pocket money. It was probably not even enough for a week's shopping, but I managed to generate revenue.

My splash into web development properly was when I set dbfcs up back in 2004. The idea was to run a web development agency. I was applying for funding, made a business plan and set up business bank details. But I was told I was ineligible for financial help (typical) which was supposed to help ease the cost of buying the equipment I needed (computer, camera, etc.).

I still found a couple of clients and still work for them now but the web design agency never really took off. My designs are (and were then) practical and accessible. I don't use Flash (except embedding YouTube videos), I don't go overboard with the graphics. Having said that, I wouldn't class my designs as boring.

I then set up a website that people could advertise property to rent (apparently I thought I could beat RightMove). I sent out letters for new business and had a 0% response rate. It cost me quite a bit in postage too.

I set up a ultra niche website that relates to my degree and that is one of my more lucrative sites. The only problem with it is that because it is ultra niche, there are very few affiliate programs suited to it.

So I looked back to the affiliate sites and from there I started to create affiliate based websites. i now have over 50 domains in my portfolio and most of them have sites attached to them.

In terms of coding, I've gone from FrontPage to Open Source for the early websites under dbfcs. I liked them because they were quick and easy to install. the only problem is that they wouldn't do something quite right.

I've then learned PHP and MySQL and since have built my own applications including a blog script, a cashback script, an affiliate script, a price comparison script and a feed importing script. I've got some rather handy scripts that will all, one day, come together to form the ultimate affiliate script.

Everything I've learnt about web development is self taught. I've not been to any classes. Just bough a couple of very useful books and use the Internet for any functions I need help with.

I prefer to build scripts now. I would rather do that and make something exactly how I need it rather than use some off the shelf software. That's not to say I wouldn't use it because I do. For simple sites, I use prewritten scripts. For something more adventurous, I use custom written code.