[ pronounced zee-era ]
My name is Lynn Stanphill, and I have been helping businesses get online and achieve success for over 25 years.
I built my first website in 1998.
I was in a friend's office when he had another friend walk in to say hi. Then his friend asked if we knew anyone that could build a website for him. I told him that I could, and followed up with more questions about if he had the images and the content he wanted on it. He said he did, so I told him to get them to me and I would build a website within a week of having the files. After he left, my friend asked me if I knew how to do that and I said nope - never have ... but I will within the next few days - LOL.
A previous roommate of mine, a couple of years before this, was playing around building websites by hand. After watching him, I knew that I didn't want to do that, but would wait until the right website building tools were on the market that would make it much easier, and more importantly - much faster.
I went home, did a bit of research over a couple of days, bought the tool I wanted, and started playing around with it. By the time my "first" website client brought me the images and content, I asked some follow up questions to further understand his market. I built the website for $300 and had launched myself into a new business venture.
From there, I started talking to people I knew, along with my father's clients about needing websites. My father had a wholesale offset printshop. I started getting a few sites to build. Then I put an ad in the Dallas paper in a special "once a week" insert that was focused on the Internet and businesses in the industry. After a month of no calls, I cancelled the ad, and after 3 months I received a phone call from someone that had seen my ad, cut it out and placed it on his desk to call me when he was ready to build one. I landed that site and slowly built up my clientele.
I eventually added website hosting as my number of clients increased in order to both increase income, but also take control of an area that is vital to online success.
During this time, I had been testing and playing around with online marketing, which consisted of banner ads on link exchange programs, and utilizing pay per click ads on GoTo.com. I then expanded to all the ppc advertising engines because the cost per click was as low as 5 cents per click.
Then the world changed!
Google began to dominate all search engines and when they added ppc, they very quickly became the first place anyone would go to for ads for their businesses.
For clients that sold products online, I started listing their products on the product search engines like: Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, and a few more - but the biggest one is and always be: Amazon.com, along with listing your products into the Google Product Search. There is an opportunity with WalMart - their technical implementation team isn't the greatest, and Sears - but the Sears monthly fee is ridiculously high in my opinion. If you want a 3rd - try WalMart.
Not too long after learning the product search engines, I started adding managing Affiliate programs like: CJ, ShareASale, and Pepperjam, along with setting up a few privately run affiliate programs for clients.
Then website design changed forever.
The smart phone with full internet access and apps came out. It started with the original IPhone, but it was already happening, but it was the IPhone that forced everyone to follow suit quickly.
Why was this such a change?
Before this, all websites were designed to fill a 15 inch screen. If you looked at the website with a IPhone, you could only see a small portion of the website. Everyone was turning their phones on their sides and blowing up the browser window and shrinking it all the time to see what was on the websites. Website were NOT responsive. They didn't automatically realign the content to fit properly on a phone held in a portrait view. Every website on the Internet had to be rebuilt! It took about 3-4 years for that to slowly happen, and there were still some that didn't update their websites until years afterward.
This is and will change everything! We can't fully comprehend how everything will change over the next 5-10 years.
But those that can see it, and learn to take advantage of it by implementing it into all their business processes and activities, will have a much higher chance of succeeding. This is why we have shifted our focus a bit into implementing AI opportunities for businesses that want to build their business and personal success at a rate, likely never seen before.
1989: AOL released.
1990: First commercial dial-up ISP / The first search engine created - Archie Index.
1991: First web page created. / The World Wide Web was opened to the public.
1993–1994: The introduction of graphical browsers made the internet accessible for everyday use.
1995: Known as a pivotal year with the launch of Amazon, eBay, and Windows 95.
1998: Google started / XEARA started building small business websites.
1999–2000: Internet usage saw exponential growth, with nearly half of Americans going online by 2000.
2003: MySpace started, which gave a big boost for Social Media.
2004: Web 2.0 - Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that are highly interactive and user-driven became popular.
2006: YouTube (started in 2005) purchased by Google / Facebook opened up to the public.
2007: The smart phone (IPhone) / All websites had to be rebuilt to be responsive to work properly on a phone.
2008: HTML5 was officially completed and released.
2011: Microsoft buys Skype
2015: Live streaming starts.
2016: Google launches their voice assistant.
2018: Data privacy takes center stage with GDPR.
2019: 5G rolls out
2022: ChatGPT launches - Everyday use of AI begins.
2025: AI is now being used by a majority of people.
We will create a STRATEGIC PLAN for your business that will increase your prospects, leads, and sales, and then implement a process to help you keep the customers you have.
Propel Your Business To The Top!
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Propel Your Business To The Top!
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