Congratulations ... I'll be very brief since there would be so much to tell.

First sites launched in 1993, officially two of the first 1,000 on the www. I was extremely busy and paid someone £1K to create them, they were launched as company brochure sites and still are today.

Come 1995 and I had to learn html plus took the decision, yes 1995, that we were going 100% online and that road warriors were no longer the future of our business, it would solely be online and trade exhibitions only. Over the years many talented young, all still at uni students, have learned and developed web skills etc directly under my supervision and all now have their own very successful web associated businesses.

I was one of the first to apply for AdSense and several times made the UPS Club, for those who do not know that is $10+K per month earnings, but gave that up some years ago when G made one of its strange algo updates.

I honestly have no idea how many websites I have built and especially not how many images I have created and optimised other than guessing way in excess of 250K, maybe 500K or more !

In March I'll be 73, for years I have told people I retired in 1995 since it meant I could work from home in either the UK, India or Italy whenever I wanted to since my greatest working tools of all time have been the laptop and GSM phones.

@RedBar

AWESOME! Thanks for the history. Yes, the flexibility this life provides is great. I'm from the USA, but I lived in Europe for a few years because all I needed was internet access. Now, we are back in the USA because of grandkids.

Started my main website in late 1999 while working a corporate job. I think I did everything wrong that could be done wrong with that website. I did not know html, perl, php, javascript, nothing so everything website has to be learned. Started with MS Front page as a html editor and used wwwboard forum, etc.. I started publishing Adsense in Oct. of 2003 and though they are still worth it Adsense is not my principle revenue source. I surpassed my corporate salary in about 2.5 years and then quit my corporate job.

I did start a few other websites all of which are still operational however very little traffic.

My main website is alive and very well and has funded me into a debt free life and recently semi retired. So far there's no end in sight for my first and main website.

@Edge

Fantastic story. That made me laugh a little. I can identify with the part about doing everything wrong initially.

I started programming an ASP and then those sites got hit by SQL injections, and a lot of other attacks because there were too many vulnerabilities

I then had to learn ASP.NET and C# and rebuild my website. All within one month while working a full time job. That was “fun.” LOL

Started my ecommerce site in 1997, ended up getting sued in German Supreme court for trademark infringement - i dominated the SERPS globally for a Mark owned by a major US corporation who had not SEO their site. They could not sue me in the USA because i was using fair free comparative use. In EU you cannot use trademarked terms in the meta source code... The best part is the EFF, Public Citizen and other orgs represented me. The company never tried to enforce thier judgement against me in the USA> My site ended up with 80 million free visitors and supported me for 20 years

I sold the site. I have another site launched in 2014 in niche area, it dominated the SEPR but because google has about 30 listing paid and images above the top organic listings.. the business is dying.. SEO IS DEAD