How I Became the World's First Blogger & Digital Nomad Pioneer

What You Will Learn

• The story of how I published what is likely the world's first blog post in June 1993
• How I pioneered the digital nomad lifestyle years before WiFi, mobile data, or co-working spaces existed
• The role direct-response copywriting played in building a location-independent career that has survived for over 25 years

The World's First Blog Post

To be honest, it did not look very impressive. Green text stared out from a black screen — a slab of plain text in one font only. No graphics. No bold or italics. No choice of font sizes — headlines were distinguished by putting them in all capitals.

The text told the story of how researchers were studying ant colonies and modeling their "social intelligence." The idea was to use the same "distributed brain" to make telephone networks self-healing.

It was a warm summer's day in June 1993, and I had just published what is probably the world's first blog post. A Google search might tell you that the world's first blog appeared in January 1994. But I beat that date by a good six months.

Here is the story of how I became (probably) the world's first blogger, and how this led to me pioneering the digital nomad revolution.

What's the Internet?

My tale actually began three months earlier, in April 1993. At that time, I was a freelance copywriter who specialized in working with hi-tech corporates — Apple, Microsoft, IBM, HP, and AT&T.

One of my regular clients was BT, the leading telecoms provider in the UK. Once a quarter, I would write a journal for BT's research laboratories at Adastral Park, near Ipswich. This was a printed journal — expensive to produce and limited in distribution. But it was the best tool researchers had for spreading news of their work.

Working on this journal was my favourite project. Visits to Adastral Park were always fun — the research labs felt more like a campus university than part of a huge corporation. Most of the staff were ridiculously overqualified (if you had just one PhD, you barely qualified to make the tea). But they loved their research work and their enthusiasm was infectious.

One day in April 1993, I arrived for a meeting to discover that my colleagues were super excited. "We have a great idea for the journal," one of them said. "We're going to put it on the Internet!"

I am embarrassed to admit that my response was, "What's the Internet?"

I soon learned what the Internet was all about. In those days, it was very primitive and only used by academics and researchers. But as that was exactly the audience we wanted to reach, publishing our journal online seemed like a great idea.

Better still, CERN had just announced that the technology behind the world wide web would be free and open source forever. That was the catalyst that spurred my colleagues to put our journal online — they could see the huge potential for the world wide web, although none of us even dreamed of how big it would become.

So that was how we came to create what is most likely the world's first blog. The term "blog" did not exist in those days. We called it an online journal. But it had all the important characteristics of a blog — a collection of articles on a common theme, updated with new content on a regular schedule, accessible to anyone who could get online.

Publishing the First Blog

Publishing content on the world wide web was not easy in those days. Registering a domain name cost $100, and basic hosting cost over $100 a month. There were no content management systems, and every page had to be hand-coded in HTML.

After a few tech failures, I managed to upload the first article from my home in London, using a painfully slow dial-up connection. A few moments later I got an excited call from my colleagues at Adastral Park. They could see it on the world wide web. The first ever blog was live.

My colleagues had great vision in seeing how our pioneering blog would help them spread the word about their work. But they had a very 20th-century view of how the content would be consumed.

It simply did not occur to anyone that people would read the articles online. The assumption was that you would scroll through the list of articles and print out the ones you found interesting. Then you would take the printouts to your office and read them over a cup of tea. If you wanted to share an article with a colleague, you would fax it to them. No email yet, and certainly no social media sharing.

Despite these limitations, the project was a great success. The journal now reached a bigger audience than ever before, and as the Internet started to grow, the audience mushroomed.

Going Commercial

Although my colleagues knew the Internet was important, they refused to believe it would ever become a source of profit. The mantra amongst the engineers was: "Information wants to be free. The Internet will never become commercial."

How wrong they were.

I did see that the Internet had real business potential, so I started experimenting with new technologies — email, FTP, and now-forgotten protocols like Gopher. My first email address was composed entirely of numbers, because letters were not an option yet.

I created a primitive website to advertise my freelance writing services. It was ugly, crude, and clunky, but by mid-90s standards it was just about acceptable.

The first client to find me through the website was Bechtel, a giant construction company. They became a regular client and essentially paid my mortgage for the next few years. For me, this was proof that making money via the Internet was a business model with a future.

Creating an Online Business

Somewhere around the mid-to-late 90s, affiliate programs started appearing. This was exciting because I could see the potential to make money online without selling my time. Instead, I would promote products and get paid a commission on every sale.

In the days before Google, Yahoo was king. Except it was not even a search engine — it was a human-edited directory, and submitting your website cost $199.

Search engine optimization was easy, for a while. To get to the top of your category in Yahoo, you simply had to have the earliest alphabetical listing. So I submitted a business name along the lines of AAA-Financial.com.

Nothing happened for a few days. Then I awoke to discover that I had made $211 overnight. Yahoo had finally approved my listing, and my site was top of the personal finance category. People were clicking on my links, visiting the merchants, and I was earning commissions.

It felt great. I had earned $211 while I was sleeping. Business was great — until someone else submitted AAAA-Financial.com and pushed me down to second position.

The Internet was like the wild west in those days. Making money online was fun but challenging. Most websites looked like neon signs outside a Las Vegas strip club, plastered with flashing banners and garish colours.

Nevertheless, I transitioned to making a full-time living online. I moved from affiliate marketing to running a membership-based website, which was a great success. Now I was able to quit doing freelance work entirely — my online business was paying the bills.

Better still, my income was location-independent. I did not need to be in London to attend meetings or receive packages from motorcycle messengers. I could run my business from anywhere in the world.

The World's First Digital Nomad

The digital nomad revolution started — probably — on a wet afternoon in 1999, when my rusty VW camper van rolled off the Fishguard-Rosslare ferry from the UK and stuttered onto Irish soil.

With my suitcase-sized laptop stowed in the back and my young family screaming excitedly in my ear, we set off to explore the land of the leprechauns. But now that I was running an online business, I needed to get online once in a while to keep my membership site running.

Today, that would be easy. Buy a local SIM card or log onto WiFi almost anywhere. But back in the 20th century, it was a different story.

No WiFi. No mobile SIMs. The era of internet cafes was just around the corner, but none had reached Ireland. Co-working spaces were not even a concept yet.

So every couple of days, I would knock on the door of random householders and offer them 10 Irish pounds (no Euros yet) to borrow their internet connection for half an hour. Some would take me up on the offer, and I was able to check email and deal with urgent website issues — but I had to be quick.

It was not the easiest way to run an online business, but in 1999 it was liberating. Here I was, hundreds of miles from my home in the UK, and still running my membership site. It seemed magical.

I had no idea then that I was most likely the world's first digital nomad — or that I was pioneering a revolutionary way of living life and making money. But I did know it was the beginning of a fantastic time for my family.

From London to the Other Side of the World

Having got a taste of the freedom my new business model offered, we started thinking about moving out of London. At first we thought we would move out perhaps 20 miles, maybe 50.

We ended up moving 10,000 miles — all the way to Australia. My kids grew up going to the beach after school. We travelled extensively, taking long holidays and going round the world several times.

Being a digital nomad was getting a little easier, but still tough. Every time we moved to a new destination, I had to get a second phone line installed to get online. The main line had to be reserved for phone calls — mobile phone calls were too expensive for regular use.

That was expensive and inconvenient, but it worked. Gradually, internet cafes became more common, and moving around became easier.

Despite the technical challenges, it was a wonderful way to live and a fantastic way to make a living. My online business was making good money, and I started investing in real estate to diversify my income. It seemed like nothing could go wrong.

And then the sky fell.

Crash and Burn

In 2008, America sneezed and Australia caught a cold.

The Australian economy had been rocketing, with real estate prices going through the roof. For a while, my investments seemed shrewd. But when the global recession hit, the Australian economy tanked and real estate prices plummeted.

The properties were designed for vacation rentals. When people started cancelling holidays to save money, rental income disappeared. In the end, the properties were sold at rock-bottom prices to cut losses.

The only way to avoid financial disaster was to sell my online business to clear the debts. But as that sold at a fire-sale price too, I only avoided bankruptcy by the skin of my teeth. Worst of all, my marriage became a casualty of the debacle.

By 2010, I was single and penniless. I had gone from owning a $2 million home to renting a room on the wrong side of the tracks.

I wanted to get back on my feet by starting a new online business, but I had no money to invest. Even finding 10 dollars to register a domain name would be a struggle. But I still had one skill that no court and no lawyer could take away from me.

I knew how to write words that sell.

Rising from the Ashes

I honed my copywriting skills until they were as sharp as a razor and got back to creating offers that convert.

I worked with ClickBank Platinum Partners and other online marketers, writing everything from email sequences to long-form sales pages and video sales letters.

Before long, the money was flowing and I was able to start clearing the real-estate debt. I cannot think of any other skill that would have enabled me to generate so much cash in such a short space of time. Being a direct-response copywriter is a wonderful thing.

By 2012, I was back in the black, back on my feet, and life was good again. With my children now grown up and away at university, a new phase was opening up. The digital nomad within me wanted to travel.

I sold all of my remaining possessions, keeping only a few essentials that would fit in two suitcases. And then I set off on a new voyage of exploration — first to Europe, and then to the world beyond.

In 2014, I arrived in Thailand and knew I had found the perfect base for my travels. Beautiful beaches, a low cost of living, lots to do, and a tropical climate. What more could you ask for?

A Two-Generation Digital Nomad Family

Now we have become a two-generation digital nomad family. Two of my children have gone on to create their own location-independent incomes, enabling them to live in dozens of different countries and enjoy lives of non-stop adventure.

When my oldest son, Ben, was 15, I helped him launch his first eBook on ClickBank. Now he has grown this teenage side hustle into a whole business empire as a high-volume Platinum Partner with ClickBank. We now have the pleasure of working together to create new digital products.

My second son, Sam, has travelled the world for years, earning money freelancing along the way. His freelance work has grown into a fledgling video production company.

Wherever I Lay My Hat

It has been over 30 years since my first blog post blinked into life on a green-screen monitor, and over 25 years since my digital nomad adventures began.

The journey has been a roller-coaster ride, but one with far more ups than downs. I feel privileged to have witnessed the birth of the blogging revolution and to have enjoyed the digital nomad lifestyle for so many years.

I love the fact that I can travel on a whim to any part of the world and still continue to run my business. All of my non-digital assets still fit into two suitcases with room to spare. Most of the time I travel even lighter — all I need is my laptop and a few essentials in my backpack.

In this amazingly connected world, I can arrive at a new destination on the other side of the planet and still be in touch with my clients and business partners. I have been able to meet up with family and friends in London, Bangkok, Cancun, New Orleans, Chiang Mai, Budapest, Valencia, Singapore, Penang, and Yangon.

Over the years, my digital nomad adventures have included:

• Getting arrested for "smuggling" a single banana
• Catching venomous snakes for a wildlife charity
• Motorbiking the 800 mountain bends from Chiang Mai to Pai
• Seeing the Space Shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral
• Getting soaked in the world's biggest water fight at Songkran
• A road trip along Route 66

After more than two decades of this lifestyle, I am still enjoying it as much as ever. Retirement? Forget it. When you do a job you love, you never need to retire.

The direct-response copywriting skills that pulled me out of financial ruin in 2010 are the same skills that keep my business thriving today. The platforms change, the formats evolve — from sales letters to VSLs to Facebook ads — but the fundamental psychology of persuasion never changes.

If you are thinking about building a location-independent career, I cannot recommend copywriting highly enough. It is the one skill that travels with you everywhere, works in any economy, and pays better the longer you do it.