My first commercial website was for a family
business, Charles Prowell Woodworks, in 1995. It caused a minor
furor at the Internet Festival that year in Sonoma County, where
the idea of making a living online hadn't caught on yet. We went
so far as to not even list the phone number in media ads. If you
wanted CPW, you had to pay a visit to the web gallery itself.
It was easy, of course, to be at the top of Yahoo! back then,
but we made staying there a priority. And there's only been one
period when CPW slipped off the list into instant obscurity.
We worked up a comic account of that hard-earned lesson I've included
here for sentimental fun. But the point is, we're still at
the top in all competitive categories despite the phenomenal growth
of the Internet.
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