About Me

Hi,

My name is Jeff Hendrickson. Glad to see you made it to my about me page! I guess you’d like to know who writes the stuff you find here.

Well to keep it somewhat short I am an artist at heart. It’s what I knew I was going to be from a very early age. I was always drawing and making stuff as a kid. I was pretty inventive. My father was always in the garage building stuff, welding, working on cars etc. and I always loved helping him. I love working with my hands and sadly don’t do that anymore as I’ve moved to working on the computer. I also don’t currently own a workshop which is what I’d love to have sometime in the near future.

Anyway, I took my first typing class in 7th grade as well as my first computer class and did really well. Unfortunately our family never had a computer at home so the only time I saw computers was at school. In high school I never took any computer specific classes and didn’t really know what I was going to do in life until I got to college. That’s when I took my first intro to the mac class and surprisingly I didn’t do that well. I think I got a C but the class wasn’t that fun to me… I had a strict German women for a teacher who had no personality. To say the least we didn’t get along.

The computer center of my university was somewhat small. Only when you went in the back room did you really see larger workstations (powermacs) that at first site totally intimidated me. They looked like super computers to me. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be spending most of my time on them. That happened in my second year of college when I actually learned there was such thing as graphic design.

See, my parents knew I loved art, but they didn’t think you could make any money at it. And they didn’t want to spend 100k on an art education for me to not come out and make a good income. So one day talking to my freshman counselor I learned that there was this thing called graphic design… and I was hooked. I could make art and tell my parents that graphic designers actually make good money. It was a win win. So I dove in.

I spent a lot of time in that back computer room learning all the industry standard tools graphic designers use.. Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress etc. I really excelled. One of my teachers took note and hired me as the assistant art director of the university. It was cool and he was cool. He was one of the younger teachers who actually graduated years before from the same school. He was a breath of fresh air from the older more set-in-their-ways teachers I had. He was on the cutting edge. I learned a lot from him. (btw, he’s now the vp of marketing for fuel.tv)

I graduated with a BA in Art with emphasis on graphic design in 1998 and got my first job just down the street from the school at Nightscaping - an outdoor lighting manufacturer. After being asked to design the company website I soon found myself learning everything I could about website design and the web. I stayed there for 3 years doing all types of collateral work including brochures, catalogs, cd-roms and even their website.

I worked as art director in charge of the design department. I did really well there but my life was taking some turns as I became more and more unhappy with my job and relationship at the time. I learned a lot there and in a short amount of time. I had become worried about my future however, being curious with an entreprenurial spirit I decided it was time to see if I could work for myself.

I knew there was a lot of money to be made on the net and so I ventured off on my own. I partnered with a friend to start a web hosting company. It was one of those things where you just follow your dreams no matter what. I mean,, we were broke. It was rough. We worked a whole year before really making any money.

It’s during that time I was doing the web design and learning how to actually get website visitors. We worked day and night online and I learned so much. This was before the term SEO was even coined. It was during the same time a little company called Google emerged.

Anyway, we did pretty well for starting a company from scratch. From doing SEO we were able to achieve 1st page ranking for keywords like “web hosting” and maintained #1 listings for a lot of web hosting related keywords like “cheap web hosting” etc. I don’t have to tell you that business was good… for awhile.

Without a real business plan though business dwindled. We didn’t know where we were headed and ran into a few snags that brought everything tumbling down. In 2003 we parted ways and closed up shop.

That’s when I moved to San Diego and started focusing on how I was going to survive online on my own. I had just heard of Adsense and gave it a go. A friend of mine at the time was making good money from Adsense with a few directories he had built and he taught me how to build one. I think the same day he taught me how to build a directory I had built 10 that night. And I didn’t stop there. I built a lot of sites, did SEO, link building etc. I basically built up a very large network of websites that brought in money on a regular basis. Money from Adsense, affiliate marketing, text links, paid listings etc.

That brings us to today. I am still earning my living online and still have an entrepreneurial spirit. I hope to produce some of my own products this year to help others learn SEO and how they can increase business through search engine marketing.

I blog whenever I have free time about web design and seo and also offer web design and search engine optimization services to clients worldwide.

I currently reside in Oslo, Norway with my lovely Norwegian wife. We have the most beautiful daughter and now a new son… who’s absolutely awesome.

Well, that’s the short of it..

If you have any questions or want to contact me for any reason please do so.

Regards,

Jeff Hendrickson

eMail: jeffhendricksondesign{a}gmail.com