About
I'm Ben, an online marketer who has been in the industry for over 18 years. I have a BEng in Computer Science from the University of York in the UK. After graduation, I found a job in email marketing for a company that was eventually bought by the DMGT.
My big break came when I cracked affiliate marketing in 2009. What started off as a side gig turned into a full-time income. It was still hard back then but a lot easier than it is today to make money from affiliate programs. I learned SEO from the now-defunct SEObook forum. Some good times learning about SEO when there were still secrets. Penguin really marked the beginning of the end for that era of SEOs.
SEObook meet up at Pubcon Las Vegas 2010
Being an affiliate, everything is tracked and payment is on results only. This requires a broad skill set that includes, Web development, SEO, PPC, Lead Generation, Data Protection, Business Development, and of course, website analytics.
Fun SEO fact about me
I once helped get Google Chrome demoted in the Index. This post about being sponsored by Google was inspired by a post I wrote in the forum. I noticed Chrome were buying blog posts and mentioned it in the forum. Aaron Wall being Aaron Wall loves it when Google being hypocritical and blogged about it. It lead to its page rank being demoted and not ranking for key terms.
If I would have had the foresight, I would have asked for a link but back then I was happy making money from affiliate schemes and would rather be anonymous. Whether or not after a decade the link would still pass as much page rank is another matter but I should have had the foresight.
Living in Ireland
I moved to the Republic of Ireland a few years after I got married. Many things are the same over here but other things are different. For example, they don't have ISAs so you pay a hell of a lot of tax on your investments. I'll be providing some little life hacks about a Brit living in Ireland in the blog too. I still go back to Sheffield and have my house over there still.
Copper Chunk Ltd
I trade via my limited company Copperchunk Ltd. A strange name based on my old X-Box live gamer tag.