Where Does 599cd Come From?

Lots of people ask me what this 599cd.com is that everyone sees in random places on my website including most of my URLs. Well if you care here's the story... 

My business originally started in 1994 as Amicron, later Amicron Computing. I originally was going to go with Micron because it sounds cool, but I discovered there already was a Micron Computer at the time. So in order to put myself higher in the phone book I just threw an "A" in front of it. That's where Amicron comes from.

I originally started with the classic computer sales and service company, operating in the Western New York area. Business was pretty good. A few years later I added classroom-based computer training to the mix, as well as custom Access database development for small businesses.

I used to advertise my business with a fax-delivered newsletter called ComputerFAQs. It was very popular. At one point I had a circulation of over 20,000. Of course, that was before the "junk fax" laws they have today. Still, people loved my newsletter. Some would actually call if they didn't get their newsletter that month.

I ran the PC hardware & service business until 2001. Y2K killed me, as all of my clients spent their budgets on new equipment and software in 1999. So I needed a change. Taking note of some of those other companies that advertised computer training videos on late-night television, I decided to record some of my classes and sell them on CDs. This was at the time before high speed Internet so I had to actually mail out CDs. My marketing gimmick was that you get a full hour of beginner training for $5.99. That's where 599cd came from.

Flash forward a few years and everyone started getting high speed Internet and YouTube became popular so I no longer had to ship actual physical CDs. I could just post videos online. The quality was crappy at first, but as you can see today everyone is streaming HD video

Looking to improve my brand name I purchased ComputerLearningZone.com and a few others like AccessLearningZone.com and ExcelLearningZone.com. They're catchy names and great for mentioning in my videos, however my website was still built on the 599cd.com domain name.

I have very good Google search placement for a lot of keywords, and the domain has been around for 16 years now, so rather than ditch it completely I decided to keep that as the actual domain name. It's good for links, too, because it's nice and short. Much less to type. I actually created my own URL shortener for long links like this: http://599CD.com/X3FVP

So that's where the name comes from. Now you know and thanks for reading my history lesson. LOL

By the way, those are some actual screen shots I found in the Internet Wayback Machine. It's a cool site that captures snapshots of every web site going back decades. You can see the evolution of pretty much any site since its beginning. I took the ALZ screen shots from the first video to have the name Access Learning Zone. Check out that awesome picture quality. Wow. I need to re-record those old ones. Will someone please add another 20 hours to each day?

Thanks!