Stockbroker to Web Developing

Being a Stockbroker you are responsible for almost everything. A significant part of my day was dedicated to activities that were related to marketing. I’d create newsletters, informational brochures, flyers and the like.

While at a previous brokerage firm I already had an email address. At the time almost no one heard of email let alone the "internet"! After reading an article about HTML programming I decided that I would sit down and create a website for myself. A few days later I had myself a basic website and I let it loose upon the world!

It was great for me to see others getting use from the site which primarily focused on information about investment and links to other investment websites. After a short while there were others linking back to the site and writing about it. I even started to get new clients through the site.

At the next firm I was working for, the website continued to expand. This investment house had institutional investors and created a daily fax for clients. Why fax it out? I decided to post it on my website for everyone. It was soon after that the higher-ups were contacted by institutional investors who loved the new website and quick access to current and past daily reports.

However the higher-ups were very concerned about my website. They were worried that we could be sued because people from outside our jurisdiction could view our information and it would be considered solicitation (in an investment sense!) What?!?! The sheer ignorance of some people. Nowadays, the internet is old hat, people aren’t paranoid about having a web presence. Back "in the day" because the higher-ups didn’t understand the internet they were literally afraid of it! Having people viewing the website was no different from people reading a newspaper. It just so happened that my newspaper was free and available to anyone! Anyways I digress....

This internet thing was cool! During a marketing campaign I solicited many mutual funds and created one page website on my own site. For many of these companies it was the first time they had a web presence.

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