blondish.net

History of Nile’s Internet Exodus

In the beginning, I just did Yahooo! chat. For those who remember the good old days before Geocities and eGroups merged into Yahoo!, I was known as Nile1345.

In Yahoo! Clubs (before it became Yahoo! Groups) I was co-founder of several of the top ten largest groups online: Tenchiville (for fans of the anime Tenchimuyoyo), Boyfriend and Girlfriend Alley, and Singles. None survived the transfer when eGroups became Yahoo! Groups, which had been a great fear realized since the database was so large for each group. At its last viewing, Boyfriend and Girlfriend alley had reached well over 50,000 members with well over 500 plus new members joining per day. During that time, I had dabbled in simple table design, but no graphics other than adopting some from various resources online.

I dabbled here and there on various projects online, but it was not until April 2002 that I took web design more seriously. I made a site called Petals In The Wind on a Yahoo! Geocities site ( geocities.yahoo.com/nile_usa .) The site was always a personal based site which hosted my writings and a few other things. I joined a website competition called The Site Fights and my site competed against many others, doing fairly well. As a side note, I was 2nd place the first year I ran for their Site Fighter of the Year and in contension toward possible winning on a second year. I became disheartened after knowing that the person who had won first place had never received her prize (Rebecca of Devoted to Danes. She has still never received it and in their stead I gave her a domain that she maintained for some time.)

In December 2002 that I bought my first domain juniperiris.com and transferred my files from my Geocities site to my subdomain at petalsinthewind.juniperiris.com . For almost a year and a half I dabbled more in graphic and web design before I took up a second domain, Pixelled.com and moved on to maintaining pitw.pixelled.com as not just a site that offered my writing, but also graphics and even a web blog.

My first commission for web design was December 2003! I made $40 and I completed it in a weeks time despite suffering 3 days of it with a terrible case of pink eye.

My site grew and I started hosting others on my domain at Pixelled.com, and so I looked to move onto my own domain. After teaming up with a woman name Anna, whom I had previously met while at The Site Fights, I started my own Webhost Company. We started off with a simple reseller account called Cyber Pixies, and eventually those who had visited my site or by word of mouth, we were getting okay business. One of our clients, a mutual friend had bought a domain and within a few months switched to a different domain. The domain was Blueberriez.com and I could not pass up the opportunity. If she was not going to use it, I was going to ask.

I ended up moving to Blueberriez.com the beginning of October 2004. I expanded the site to include themes in which my site could be viewed and added other activities to my slowly growing network.

By the end of 2004, I had developed Shameless Plug, a plug site with a varied but similar script to Starlet’s Plugboard script, and Pixelled Listings

Now, I loved having my site at Blueberriez.com, but after a few years, I felt that perhaps it was not as mature or did not suit me as I had originally planned. I carefully thought of different domains, including my own name and even .nu. I wanted the domain name to fit me well. One thing that most people notice and it has been a signature trait is my long golden blond hair. In fact, I was told by many friends and family that if I cut it, they might have to hurt me or according to a few, kill me. (haha) After a few times rearranging how many ways you can say Blond, I came up with Blondish.net.

During this time I was having host problems. With my business partner, I got new servers and we became a real virtual webhost in January 2005. It was not until August 2006 that I ventured on my own. It was an unfortunate and bitter parting. I was appalled on how little my work was really appreciated and I had referred well over 80% of the clients and no pay. On the other side of the coin, my business partner believes the same of myself so I guess in our case it was not good that we started a business as friends. The price was many times well over the webhosting package I actually used and the advertising I did. I bought my own servers and went from being a non-paid co-owner of Pixelled Solutions to Owner of Host Solutions.

As for my future Internet exodus plans, I have no plans of leaving Blondish.net anytime soon. I will however be opening more free projects to entertain others as many of my projects have been quite enjoyable.