To coincide with BR's first Online Careers Fair, us bloggers have been encouraged to write on the theme of jobs, so I'm hoping if I tell you mine you'll tell me yours!
It all began in the year 2000....
... I was an eternally resting actor working at Harrods, and had been for 6 years. A degree in drama from Exeter University had propelled me to London and that infernal shop in Knightsbridge and I was trapped, aged 28, with no way out.
I done a few bits and bobs in theatre and TV, but realised the instability wasn't for me so I discovered the internet! Well, obviously I didn't discover it, TBL did, but I realised it may have some employment potential for me.
So I read every book/magazine going, did a week's work experience at a local paper my friend George was the editor of in Kent, and I did a week's course in web design, run by some Russians in East London.
This all meant I was more than qualified to get the job as Shopping & Travel Editor at BTLooksmart!
BTLooksmart was apparently the biggest internet start up outside the US at the time. A joint venture between BT and LookSmart, (a search directory provider based in the US), the investment was said to be $100m to provide search engine directories in a number of European countries, and monetise the traffic through advertising.
With hindsight it was a flawed business model to have display ads and pop-ups on search result pages, although we were the search engine for Tiscali, NTL and BT's ISP homepages, the US HQ were too slow to embrace the PPC and PFP models, and Overture and Google soon took over that whole space.
My job for the 1st six months was to write reviews of websites for inclusion into the directory. My target was a corking 55 per day, although I'd always manage 60+ just to suck up.
Can you imagine 15 editors all cranking out 55 reviews a day, and paying them internet-boom salaries when a search engine bot could do the lot in seconds? What were they thinking!!!
I soon moved on to the product and revenue management side of the business, and was one of seven guys out of fifty staff asked to stay on after BT dumped LookSmart in 2002.
In one year the seven of us, monetising paid inclusion listings on MSN, managed to creep back up to the same revenue number the entire search and display business was generating the year before.
No wonder Microsoft decided to get into the search game themselves......and look where I ended up :-)
In 2004 LookSmart decided to withdraw from the UK, and I was given the honour of turning off the lights in our fabulous office in Waterloo.
It was April 1st..........how appropriate!
