Yes, our website has been going through a lot of changes lately, and some of you may be wondering exactly what is going on. And yes, technically this is a new website, but it is NOT the new website we’ve been promising for a while now. That’s still coming, and as soon as we have it finalized it will replace this new website. It shouldn’t be long now.
But I still haven’t answered the question of “what’s with all the changes?” Well, our business is changing in some pretty significant ways, and we are in the process of updating our website to reflect those changes. Those of you who have been with us from our beginnings back in 1999 shouldn’t be at all surprised by these developments…after all, the Internet (and along with it, Internet Marketing) has changed quite dramatically since we first started providing online marketing services almost 20 years ago.
Until very recently, our focus has been on providing do-it-yourself (DIY) website building and Internet marketing tools to those who didn’t want or need (or couldn’t afford) to have someone build, maintain, and promote their online presence for them. And as our long-time customers know, our focus has always been on providing exceptional value in a market in which many of our competitors have focused on making themselves rich by preying on a public that didn’t really understand very much about the inner workings of the Internet.
I still remember watching in shock as website developers charged (and received!) over $10,000 for small websites built in Microsoft FrontPage or other popular tools from the early days of the World Wide Web, and knowing that these websites were most likely built by a single person in a day or two. I realize that I could have made a lot of money doing the same thing, but I have a conscience that simply won’t let me do business that way. I like to be able to sleep at night.
So I stayed in my corporate job where I made a decent salary building corporate websites and intranets while quietly building an online business in my spare time selling domain names, web hosting, website builders, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and other related online marketing tools. To be honest, in the beginning I was my own biggest customer as I apparently had a greater appreciation for the value my online store offered than many in the still mostly-uninformed public.
Some of you may also know that the corporate lifestyle eventually became so unbearable that my wife and I left our corporate jobs and moved to a small island in Hawaii where we spent several years running the Kauai Beach Inn – Poipu Bed and Breakfast (I managed the website and online marketing, as well as handling many other responsibilities). It was an amazing and highly-rewarding experience—the business was quite successful—but we eventually realized it was time to move on, which is how we ended up where we are today, in Southern California.
My wife, Patti, got her California real estate license while I tried to figure out where to focus my energies next. To make a long story short, I decided to expand my online business into the brick and mortar world, and greatly expand the services we offer. That’s how LaunchMe.com became Launch Me Technologies and we opened our first storefront location in Menifee, California.
To be continued…
