Barry

Started messing with the internet whilst doing my art degree in the late 90's. Had to use the net to publish or upload work as it seemed the best way to get my work from my home PC to an Apple in Uni as PC disks were not readable by Macs in those days!

Left Uni as an 'Interactive Artist' - whatever the hell that is and started work in a semi conductor plant dressed like an Intel employee except without the wages! Slowly started to become addicted to the internet and started making a few quid with paypal and egold through various 'money making' websites. Then fell into the 'earn money' while you surf pattern to try to cover the local call rate while tring to design my first website on 'freenetnames!'

Started a web design company with a good friend in the early 00's which lasted a few years before having to work full time again in PC world because of a lack of reliable income from web design and the fact that everybodys friends brothers cousin had learned to program html and make websites by then (or not!).

Around 2003 I started to discover affiliate marketing and began to monitize all the hobby sites I had written in my spare time up till then. Finally realised that I could make sites for myself and began to learn asp to create my first discount voucher website.

Late 2003 FOUND A4U and started to promote discount voucher! And really began to see that I was not on my own and there was a whole industry behind affiliate marketing. I then made it out of full time employment and became a full time affiliate in late 2004. (2005 - 2006 was a bit of a write off for me however did learn a little php and MySQL). 2007 has gone well so far. Still a full time affiliate and ticking along fine, partly thanks to the A4U.

Well its 2008 now and discount voucher sites are starting to hit the news and thing towards the end of 2007 were getting silly to say the least. Now in February 2008 networks like POR and Webgains are starting to address many of the issues of codes tracking and the future is looking a bit brighter.