20th Anniversary!
By Richard Rost
4 years ago
Happy Birthday! It's Been 20 Years of 599cd.com
It's been exactly 20 years to the day since I registered my website 599cd.com. It's also been 16 years since I set up my YouTube channel. So... happy birthday to me!
I'm having a 20th Anniversary Giveaway. Watch the video for complete details... and a trip down memory lane. :)
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Feel free to share your thoughts, experiences, or other cool memories below! Thanks, and here's looking forward to the next 20 years. Can you imagine what we'll be doing in 2042...?
Intro This page celebrates the 20th anniversary of Computer Learning Zone and its journey from 599cd.com to the present. You'll hear Richard share the story behind starting the website, milestones with YouTube, and personal thanks to students, moderators, and Alex for years of support. The post highlights memorable moments from the site's early days, changes in technology and business, and includes information about a special 20th anniversary giveaway. If you are interested in the history behind the site, past ventures, or want to enter the giveaway, you'll find it all here.Transcript Hi everyone, this is Richard Rost with Computer Learning Zone. I just hit a big milestone exactly 20 years ago today, September 7, 2022. I registered 599cd.com, which would later become computerlearningzone.com, Access Learning Zone, Excel Learning Zone, and a bunch of other ones. That means I've been producing these training videos for all of you for 20 years now. Wow, where has that time gone?
I would like to take a minute to personally thank each and every one of you who have purchased one of my lessons, but since there are now over 50,000 of you, that will take some time. So I'm just going to say thank you to everyone all at once. You've allowed me to do something that I really have a passion for. I love doing this stuff and you've kept me from having to go get a real job, so I appreciate it.
Now, purely by coincidence, when I logged on to YouTube this morning, I saw a message from them saying Happy Birthday. I'm like, how did you guys know? Well, I didn't even realize it, but I registered my YouTube channel on September 7, 2006, which was 4 years to the day after I registered my website. I just realized this today, so again, Happy Birthday to me.
Again, I'd like to personally thank each and every one of my 205,522 subscribers, but same deal. It's pretty cool though. My channel has a lifetime of 37.6 million video views. Just imagine if I would have uploaded just one stupid cat video, I probably could have tripled that number.
And just in case you care, I registered my very first website, amacron.com, which was my computer sales and service business that I first started back in 1996. So next month, that's October 2022, that website will be 26 years old. It just forwards to 599cd.com now, but it's still pretty cool. But yeah, wait a minute, that means I'm old too, man. I turn 50 next month. Oh, where's the time gone?
And yeah, that's what the first version of my original website looked like. What was I thinking with all of these different fonts and colors and that green marble background? But you know what, that was considered a cool web design back in 1996.
But all joking aside, I would like to give special thanks to my right-hand man, Alex. You probably heard me mention him in some of my videos from time to time. He keeps me on my toes. He catches my goofs and he points out things that I miss.
Alex started as a student of mine back in 2010, so 12 years ago, and he started helping me out writing handbooks and answering questions from the students in my forums about a year later. His help has been absolutely priceless over the past decade. So thank you, kind sir. Now, is there any chance I could get you to change your Instagram username? I'll give you a waistcoat. Seriously, looking forward to hopefully meeting you in person one of these days and having a few pints.
I've known Alex for a very long time. He's in the UK and I'm in the US. We've been planning on getting together for a long time, but we've never actually met in person.
I would also like to thank my invaluable forum moderators. About a year ago, we signed up Scott, Kevin, and Adam, and they have taken so much of the load off of my shoulders by helping out students and answering questions in the forums. Thank you again, guys, for all that you do. We just recently welcomed three new moderators to the site, Dan, Juan, and John, and we're still breaking these guys in, so welcome to the zoo.
Now to celebrate the 20th anniversary, we've got to have some kind of a giveaway, right? I'm going to give away a whole bunch of stuff. This giveaway is going to run for a week, so you've got plenty of time to enter. Go enter right now though, so you don't forget about it.
I'm going to give away 20 $20 gift certificates to my site, 20 Silver Memberships (annual memberships), 20 Gold and 20 Platinum memberships, and one lucky winner will win the grand prize, which is a one-year MYLLP Developer Plus Membership. That includes everything on my site: all my courses, all my videos, all the extended cuts, all the templates, everything. That grand prize there is worth about $3,000.
Some very simple rules apply. No purchase necessary, but you may enter only once. No trying to stuff the ballot box and entering your name 50 times. I will catch it.
Winners will be chosen at random from all valid submissions on September 14, 2022, so next week. And when you win, if you win, I will contact you by email. I'll probably make another video to show off the winners, and yes, by entering, I get to use your name in the video. Don't like it? Too bad, don't enter then.
Since it's been 20 years, I decided to visit the Internet Wayback Machine to see what they had archived of my website. In case you didn't know this, the Internet Wayback Machine is a website that archives other websites. You can go and say, "Okay, I want to see what this website looked like on this date," and they'll have it archived. This is the very first version I found in their archive of 599cd.com.
I used to originally start off by selling courses on CD. That's where the name 599CD came from, and they were $5.99 each. There's my original order form too. If you ordered everything I had when I first started off, I had like one or two levels of everything, a whole bundle cost 50 bucks. So we've come a long way since then. I now have 40 Access Developer lessons alone. So there's a lot more stuff on the website now.
If you care about the history of 599CD, you want to learn where it came from and all the stuff about it, here's a page right there. You can go check it out. I put all the history up there for you. Here are some other pages I found from my old, old, old website.
Like I said, that was the home page. That was pretty crazy. This is back when I used to do everything - computers, service, training, pulling network cable, all that stuff. Check this one out. Again, awful backgrounds I used to use back then. But check it out. I had an Alpha-Beta Delta Gamma computer systems that I used to sell.
On a budget, only $800 for a 686P166 with 16 megs of RAM and a whole two-gigabyte hard drive. I just bought a two-terabyte thumb drive for like $30. That's amazing how the technology has changed in 20 years.
I used to offer service agreements. I used to charge $67 an hour. This is back in 1994 or 1995. I don't offer consulting anymore, but when I stopped offering consulting last year, I was charging $350 an hour. So times have changed.
Here we go. Upgrade special: 40-gigabyte hard drive, $179 bucks.
One of the things I used to do to advertise my business was I had this newsletter that I produced once a month called ComputerFacts: Frequently Asked Questions. This is my old number, by the way. Don't call that. I haven't had this number in probably 20 years now, so I don't know who has it now. But don't call them and make them mad.
But this is what it looked like. At one point, I had like 40,000 people that got this every month. I had six machines that I built that sat in my basement because I was running the business out of my house at the time. And they literally just sat there all day, all six machines sending out faxes. This is back when everybody had a fax machine, before the internet was popular. And that was it. That was my sole form of advertising.
You can't do this anymore now. They've passed laws since then; you can't just send faxes to everybody. But back then I'd get people calling me complaining every month that they didn't get their fax. So it was pretty popular.
And yes, I had my own executive training center, Executive Training Center. I used to teach a lot of WordPerfect 6.1. This is my schedule from 96 and 97. Microsoft Word, Excel, Access. I've been teaching Access for a long, long time, folks.
And of course, since the very early days, I've been doing Access database development, software development, and Access 2.0 was the first version I started using. I think this is 1994. I actually built this thing called the Small Business Database. At the time I was extremely proud of it. It did a lot of stuff. It took me like a year to build. I could probably build this now in about a weekend. So I've definitely learned a lot since then.
If you want to learn more about me and my history, there's another link for you to follow right there. You can go check my bio out and all the information about my older companies.
So there you have it. There's my walk down memory lane. I hope to be around for another 20 years, keeping all you guys entertained and educated with my videos. I really love what I'm doing. I thank all of you for allowing me to do this. I hope you guys are learning something and you enjoy watching my videos.
So once again, don't forget to head over to my website and enter the giveaway. No purchase necessary and I'll announce the winners next week. Thanks again for 20 years. We'll see you next time.Quiz No quiz available.Summary Today, I want to take a moment to celebrate a significant milestone for Computer Learning Zone. Twenty years ago, on September 7, 2002, I registered 599cd.com, which later evolved into what you now know as Computer Learning Zone, Access Learning Zone, Excel Learning Zone, and several other sites. That means I've been producing training videos for all of you for two decades now. It's honestly incredible how quickly the time has passed.
I want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who has ever purchased one of my lessons. With over 50,000 students now, I don't have the means to reach out to every individual, so I'm offering my gratitude to all of you here. Your support has allowed me to pursue something I truly love and, as a bonus, has kept me from needing to find some other form of work. I appreciate it more than you know.
Interestingly, today brought another coincidence. When I logged onto YouTube this morning, there was a "Happy Birthday" message waiting for me. At first I wondered how they knew, but then I realized I had registered my YouTube channel on September 7, 2006, which is exactly four years after I registered my original website. So, happy birthday to me twice over. Currently, the channel has over 205,000 subscribers and a lifetime total of 37.6 million video views. It really makes me wonder what might have happened if I'd uploaded one of those classic viral cat videos!
For those who are interested in more of the backstory, my first website wasn't even computerlearningzone.com. It was amacron.com, a computer sales and service business I started in 1996. Next month, that site turns twenty-six years old. While it now simply forwards visitors to 599cd.com, it's a testament to how far things have come - and to how long I've been at this! As for me, I turn fifty next month. Where has the time gone?
Looking back at the first version of my website makes me chuckle. The design featured a wild variety of fonts and colors set against a green marble background, which, believe it or not, was the height of web design fashion in 1996.
I'm not the only one I want to acknowledge. A very special thank you goes out to Alex, who has been invaluable over the years. Some of you will recognize his name from my videos or our forums. He started as a student of mine in 2010, and within a year began helping me write handbooks and answer forum questions. His assistance over the past twelve years has been absolutely indispensable. Alex is based in the UK and I'm here in the US, so while we've worked together for a long time, we've yet to meet in person. One of these days, hopefully, we'll get to meet up and grab a pint.
I also need to thank my dedicated forum moderators. About a year ago, Scott, Kevin, and Adam joined the team, lightening my workload by assisting students and addressing their questions in the forums. More recently, Dan, Juan, and John have come onboard and are still getting settled into their roles. Welcome aboard, everyone, and thank you for making the community even stronger.
Of course, a big anniversary calls for a celebration, and to mark twenty years, I'm holding a giveaway with lots of great prizes. The giveaway will be open for a week, so you have plenty of time to enter, but I recommend doing it soon so you don't forget. I'll be awarding 20 $20 gift certificates to my site, 20 annual Silver Memberships, 20 Gold, and 20 Platinum memberships, and one grand prize winner will receive a full year of MYLLP Developer Plus Membership, which grants access to absolutely everything on my site - every course, every video, all extended cuts, templates, and more. That grand prize alone is valued at roughly $3,000.
The rules are straightforward. No purchase is required, but you are limited to one entry per person. Please don't try to enter multiple times. I will be randomly selecting winners from all valid submissions on September 14, 2022, and if you win, I'll contact you by email. I expect to make a follow-up video announcing the winners, and by entering you agree that I can mention your name in that announcement.
To commemorate the past two decades, I took a tour through the Internet Wayback Machine, which archives snapshots of websites through the years. If you're unfamiliar with it, the Wayback Machine is a resource where you can see earlier versions of just about any website. I found the first archived version of 599cd.com, back when my business model revolved around selling computer courses on CD for $5.99 each. The entire selection back then would have cost around $50. Compare that to today, where there are now forty different Access Developer lessons alone. It's astonishing how much the library has expanded.
For those who are curious, I have a page on my site dedicated to the full history of 599CD, and you can check it out if you want to see where everything started. It's filled with some fun old pages and designs, a real blast from the past!
Back in those early days, my business wasn't just about training. I also offered computer sales, service contracts, training, and even network cabling. For example, at that time, you could buy a system with a whopping sixteen megabytes of RAM and a two-gigabyte hard drive for $800. Nowadays, you can buy a two-terabyte thumb drive for around $30, which just goes to show how much things have changed. My original service agreement rates were $67 per hour back in the mid-'90s, which climbed all the way up to $350 per hour by the time I stopped offering consulting last year.
Another key part of my business was a monthly faxed newsletter called "ComputerFacts: Frequently Asked Questions," which was delivered to over 40,000 recipients at its peak. I had six machines in my basement sending out faxes all day, which was entirely normal before the rise of the internet. Believe it or not, I would even get complaints when someone missed their fax - it was that popular.
I also ran my own executive training center, offering courses on software like WordPerfect 6.1, Microsoft Word, Excel, and Access. Access database development has always been a core part of what I do, stretching all the way back to Access 2.0 in 1994. My very first big project was the Small Business Database, which I spent a year building and was very proud of at the time. Today, I could build something similar in a weekend, which just shows how much I've learned over the years.
If you're interested in diving even deeper into my background and the early days of my companies, there's a biography page you can visit for more details.
So that's my walk down memory lane. I truly hope to be here for the next twenty years, continuing to teach, share, and help you grow with my tutorials. Thank you once again for your continued support and for allowing me to do what I love. I hope you're enjoying the lessons and finding them helpful.
And just as a reminder, make sure to head over to my website and enter the giveaway. You don't need to make a purchase, and I'll announce the winners next week. Thank you all for making these twenty years unforgettable.
You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.Topic List This is a 20th anniversary message and giveaway announcement, reflecting on the history of Computer Learning Zone, thanking subscribers and forum moderators, sharing some personal milestones, and inviting viewers to enter a celebratory giveaway. |
