I like to wear other people’s sunglasses and take posey pictures of myself. See exhibit A. I live on a diet of tea, pasta and the internet. I do so from the comfort of my flat in the beautiful, little cathedral city of Lichfield.

Primarily, I am an internet strategist / marketer / evangelist / consultant. Basically, I help companies make a success of their online presence. I guide the boat in the right direction, from planning and managing a web site build, right through to web analytics and measuring performance. I’ll gladly do all that for you, too. I accept payment in cash, salted popcorn and/or mugs of tea.

In my spare time I’m usually… working. I do have a “normal” life occasionally, in which I see friends and watch as many films as I can muster. Either that or I’m reading books and trying to learn everything I can.

 I’m a social media fan. I like to tweet. I dabble in development, mainly PHP but I’m desperate to learn RoR, Ajax and Python, amongst others.

I’m big into ethics and believe in ‘doing things right’. I’m still working out what that means, but I’m getting somewhere at least.

My Blog

You will find a whole range of topics on my blog. Mostly, they’ll be related to the internet in some way. Other topics you may find are dementia (because my Dad has Pick’s disease), the Police (because I’m hoping to become a Special Constable), politics and law (because it floats my boat), tech gadgets and geek-ware (‘cause I’m a big geek), business and entrepreneurship (‘cause I’m gonna be the next Branson) and ethics (because we need to be aware of our own moral conscience).

Where I’ve Come From

I started in web development back in 1998 when I taught myself HTML. I kept teaching myself using the internet and soon had a decent handle on Javascript and CSS.

My first major web project was F1 Kingdom way back in 2001, of which only an Archive.org copy remains. F1 Kingdom introduced me to affiliate marketing and SEO, which I jumped on as my first jaunt into online marketing.

Then, as I started sixth form I landed my dream job at the time – web site developer. It was only part time but after two years of A-levels I jumped into the role full time. The four years I spent in the position taught me even more about internet marketing, culminating in my co-founding an SEM agency – my first proper venture into business.

A two-man band for a long time, the agency provided SEO and PPC services to SMEs. We expanded to a team of five after 2 years of full-time operation. By this time I’d realised that SEO was completely mis-defined. It occurred to me that SEO was being treated as a marketing strategy when real SEO is barely even a marketing tactic.

Ethically, I felt that I was lying to clients. Instead, I decided to use the broad knowledge I’d built up of the internet to help companies develop cohesive marketing strategies, comprised of the right marketing tactics, such as SEO (in its correct form). And that’s where I am today. It’s been a busy few years!

Disclaimers

I wanted to be open with some things about this site. If I link to a book or product that I recommend I may well use an affiliate link (we all need to earn a living!) but I’ll always state that next to the link anyway. If you see one I’ve missed, please let me know and accept my sincere apologies for being lax.

Also, if I do link through to any site or product it doesn’t necessarily mean I endorse it. If I do, it’ll usually be accompanied with phrases like “frickin’ awesome” and “damn cool”.

Oh, I take care over spelling and grammar, too, so if you see anything that looks odd or just plain wrong, please tell me. I’d hate to think I have speeling mistakes and bad England everywhere.