How I attained my biography

My employer Onetomarket asked me to write a small biography. As I was thinking about what to write in it, I found out that my past had a large influence in becoming who I am right now. That it’s that strange, but it was really fun to see that all the pieces came together. I really don’t think all of you have interest in this topic, but personally, I like people to tell what formed them. Therefore, let me just briefly say a few things about myself.

Making money

At an early age, I was busy making plans to become rich very fast. I didn’t succeed. But I did keep thinking about money. At my birthday parties, I knew the price of the gifts I received. My parents didn’t like it, but I think somewhere in those days I decided to become an entrepeneur.

Doing HTML and PHP

I started building websites at the age of 15 or something like that. I registered a few .com-domains (they were free those days) and I learned some HTML based on books and tutorials. The Dutch website phpfreakz.nl offered me interesting PHP articles and together with some friends, we made our first PHP ‘applications’. I can remember that I found out that is was possible to show news items only within a certain time period - awesome!

Gaining confidence

The think I liked about building websites, was that it was to do this all alone and anonymous. Before the age of 16, I was pretty shy. In that time, I visited a youth group interdenominatial youth group. At a certain moment I was asked to join the leadership team. I didn’t know what to expect, but I really liked the confidence the other leaders put in me. During my leadership, I gained more confidence and found out that I really liked standing in front of a crowd (up to 60 people).

Thinking in a analytical way

At the age of 18, I went to university. The study I chose is called Econometrics or Operations Research. It’s a combination of maths, statistics and programming. Within the student fellowship I attended, I gained even more self-confidence because of all the groups I attended. Besides that, the study learned me to think in a statistical and systematic way. Later on, these skills was necessary to organize in a good way. I was capable of breaking problems down into small parts and to keep track of everything what’s going on.

All the pieces fit together

During those years, I continued working on websites and made multiple content management systems. After doing this for a few years, my old interest in making money evolved into the website building. Wasn’t it possible to make more money with the same number of websites I had to make? Yeah, it was. I started to dive into the internet marketing aspect of building websites, instead of only looking at the technical issues.

Together with two friends, I started a Dutch blog about online marketing and web development called Netters.nl. Somewhere in the beginning of 2007, Joost invited me to apply for a job as SEO consultant within Onetomarket, based on the things I wrote on my blog.

And now this is who I am - an SEO consultant with: