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THE HUN
Michael asked me to write 1400 words on          affiliates in 1995, it was nothing but affiliates in
       how the past year was for us at The Hun.  2008. Now the affiliate market has changed.

Well, that’s the first 22 words done. Now for the Most generate their own traffic. We always

rest. Some of you might not know me or my listed other people’s galleries. People would

site. Back in 1995 I started a website with links get content from a pay site, build a gallery out

to free content on the internet. That website of that, and submitted those galleries to us

went viral, not in the way it goes now, but the and several other sites out there. A handful

“old fashioned” word of mouth viral. Soon the of people still do that, but we can see there

website had 100,000 views every day, which are less and less. Also, because we linked to

back then was huge. Bandwidth was still other people’s galleries, we were interesting

expensive, affiliate programs didn’t exist, and for the user, as the variety was unmatched.

advertising was still a new thing. It was the Wild But Google never gave us a lot of love when

West era of the Web. I didn’t have any hosting it came to sending traffic other than people

plan for my website. It was running on the looking for “the hun.” We are now working

personal website space everybody got from more and more with pay sites directly to get

their ISP. (I think the address was http://www. the content for promotions we build in-house

tip.nl/~t256553/thehun.html.)                    and host on our own servers. And we see that

                                                 it pays off. Google is seeing more and more

Obviously, after about a month, bandwidth categorized and relevant content on our site.

got out of control and I was kicked off the People still spend 8-10 minutes on thehun.net

Internet as far as that (free) hosting company on an average visit, and now that the content

was concerned. A friend of mine who I was is on our own domain, Google is starting to

studying with at the time had started a hosting show us some love -- finally. We are working on

company. Long story short, I could run the doing more and more of that -- everything on an

site on their spare bandwidth, and we would affiliate basis. We build everything to match the

sell advertising space on it to eventually pay pay site that is pushed, which means making a

for it. We obtained a domain name, thehun.net template for every site we work with, which is

-- not dot com. Dot com was commercial and fun, but it’s also a lot of work.

we were not a commercial site. We were more

like a network. So thehun.net it was. The site   What else was a big thing? Hmm... I took

grew out to become one of the biggest on the over a beer brewery in the Netherlands. This

Internet for a very long time. We were bigger has nothing to do with The Hun of course,

than Google, but that might be mainly because but it’s something that I spent a lot of time on

they didn’t exist back then!                     in 2019, and I will be spending more on in the

                                                 time to come. It’s so much fun to work with

Anyway, that was 24 years ago. I was asked something else than a computer, which is what I

to write something on 2019 and how this year have done pretty much all my life. When working

was for us. It’s been an interesting year with big hard gives you energy, you know you’re doing

change! The next generation is slowly taking something you like. And that energy reflects

over! My youngest son (don’t worry, he’s old back to everything, even the programming on

enough to work in this industry!) is infected with The Hun. Stuff that’s been delayed too long,

the same programming virus that got me at an things that never got off the ground, now get

early age. He’s getting acquainted with the ins done. Last year we started a project for porn

and outs of our software. Everything we use jokes, jokes.xxx. I think the whole thing was

we wrote ourselves.                              programmed in a weekend. No sleep, just

                                                 coding your heart out, just like 30 years ago.

Also, for the past years now we’ve seen a And now that we’re coding in a team that’s not

change on the Internet. Where there were no as lonely as it sounds!

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