Profile
Updated July 2010
Why would you care about what I have to say?:
Even though I’ve only been doing this online thing for about five years, allow me to list some of the thing’s I’ve managed to do right so far (I call this my brag-roll):
- My site was earning $1,000/month after only 4 months
- My site currently generates approx $4,000 – $14,000 a month in earnings (over $300,000 since i started it in Jan 2006)
- My site had over 15,000 active members after only 24 months
- My site was talked-about at length by Leo Laporte on his national radio show
- My site was a Google Adsense Success Story
one of only 16 Success Stories ever published by Google
- My site was mentioned on the Adsense Blog
- My site has been on the front page of Digg.com
- My blog has been on the front page of Digg.com
- Kontera quoted me and mentioned my site in their latest Press Release
- I sold approximately 1,000 copies of my $10 “Tearabite eBook” (with 99.8% positive reviews)- and it’s now free here in the blog
- My marketing efforts got me on Gizmodo.com
“my site” refers to my most successful website, GrownUpGeek.com
Why I started This blog:
I originally created this blog at blogger.com simply as an SEO tool and a way to make deep-links into GrownUpGeek.com. After a few months I started treating it a bit more like a ‘real’ blog, but it still lacked any real focus. By late 2006 the main focus was GrownUpGeek.com, but I still tended to wander a bit with the subject matter. It was not until mid 2007 that I pledged to myself to keep this blog focused on “How I Did It”, as it relates to my success with GrownUpGeek.com in hopes of helping other new webmasters. In September 2007 I moved the blog from Blogger/Blogspot.com to my own domain running WordPress.
What I do in this blog:
These are the things that this blog focuses on:
- Explaining “how I did” various things with regards to the website
- Asking questions and soliciting opinions: I’m still learning, so I use my blog to gather info on various subjects
- Posting things that I learn or figure out that I think might be helpful or interesting to you
- Bragging: I will use the blog to give updates on the popularity/earnings of site as well as my achievements. I do not talk about the website with any friends or family so this is really the only place that I can tell anyone about my accomplishments or toot my own horn.
What I do not do in this blog:
- Regurgitate or prognosticate about daily news or trends in the Internet/SEO/Internet Marketing/Webmaster world
- Preach to you about how/when/or why to do anything. My focus is simply “this is what I did”, “this is how I did it”, “this is why I did it”, etc. My hope is that you can learn from what I have done or mistakes that I have made and apply them however you see fit.. Take from it what you will.
- Complain or Dream: No personal rants about what airports bathrooms I hate the most, cars I’d like to buy or my favorite TV shows.
- No “Miscellaneous Ramblings” – I promise
About Me (saved the boring part for last):
My name is Randy Brown. I’m in my (very) early 40’s and I have lived in Southern California my entire life. I have been a bit of a computer geek since the age of 13 when my father gave me a TRS-80 Model-I for Christmas (I wanted a CB radio!). For the last 16 years I have worked as an I.T. department manager – the last 10 years at the Aerospace Division of one the worlds largest employers. Over the course of my life I have also worked odd-jobs such as taxi-cab driver, waiter, Customer Service Manager, Customer Service Support, and even Radio-Shack sales person. My original career aspiration was to be a police officer, but in 1992 while awaiting the completion of my background investigation for a job with the Los Angeles Police Department (this usually takes a few months) I took a temporary job as a Technical Customer Support Rep. From there I quickly moved on to Technical Customer Support Manager and realized I could make more money and get shot at much less in an office than in a police car.
I have been married to my second wife for over 12 years and we have little boy that was born in 2003. I have an older son from my first wife who is currently stationed in Iraq with the United States Marine Corps.
Outside of a few course-classes I have no formal education or degree – I attended the “School of Life”, aka the “School of Hard Knocks”. I hate school and even the mere thought of it. I’d also like to add that I have interviewed many perspective employees that had wonderful, impressive and very pretty pieces of paper that are called degrees, yet they could not reason their way out of a paper-bag, properly answer a telephone, or speak proper or even near-proper English.
In January 2006 I started GrownUpGeek.com as a place where I could help new computer users learn to use their computer. Since then GrownUpGeek.com has grown to be extremely popular and profitable, and is now known as the place to “learn the new stuff”, no matter what the subject. I also own some other, much smaller websites but none are anywhere near as popular or successful as GrownUpGeek.com.
At the Digital Point Forums and Webmaster World I’m known as Tearabite and at GrownUpGeek.com my account name is “Hubby”.
Very impressive career, Randy. I envy you, seriously. — Shoban Sen
Hi Randy, Rosn here from Nepal. just gone through this page, no words to say. hats off to you! I’m a newbie here in this online business. A lot of expectations but have achieved nothing yet. At present, I’m into link sales but haven’t sold any link yet..just trying..no $$$ but simply learning new things..lately, i came to know that affiliate business is best way to gain success. so I’m now looking to give that idea a try. Can you please give a piece of advice on how should i start? which route to be taken as there seems to many ways to choose from? hope you would leave a reply to help me out. Thanks in advance!
Best Regards,
Rosn
Thanks for stopping by Rosn.. My advice is to try everything and stick with what works the best for you.
I think domaining would work best for me but it requires a huge amount of money. I used toi write articles but not anymore as i run a few uninteresting blogs focusing the google crawlers only. As i mentioned earlier, want to enter into affiliate too. So if you would suggest me what actually would be better for my case, that would be heartily appreciated Mr Brown.
Impressive reading about your profile plus with the news about your site getting published in Adsense success stories and Konterra.
Should take you as rolemodel then, though I’ve been blogging for 4 years .