Link Juice

Spencer Consoles Jasmine

We started Supak.com in 1996. Before we lived in Hawaii for a year. Before we understood what the internet was becoming. Before we thought it would ever be more than a hobby. Before the dot com bust.

Since then, we have learned that the internet is, and hopefully always will be, about content. If you don’t have fresh, clear, entertaining content, then what are you doing?

Our content came in the form of organic gardening, a passion, really, answering MCI mails at a quarter a pop in the early days, and starting the first organic gardening web site I’d ever heard of, on my av.qnet server in 1993. We lived near the Antelope Valley of northern Los Angeles county, in the Sierra Pelonas (Spanish for Bald Mountains).

Mort Mather

I was content hungry, and there will be people looking to get published even after the poles melt. So, I hooked up with organic farming guru and author Mort Mather, who happens to live on Bald Hill Road, in Wells, Maine. We put his Garden Spot articles on line, and off we went.

I quickly figured out that I could help people improve web site search engine rankings. We started Bald Mountain Press, and the SEO hobby come side-line was now a real company!

When my union stage hand work got very slow after the Northridge earthquake, we moved to Maui where I worked on a now defunct site about the Hawaiian Islands for a year.

It was, of course, a memorable experience. We made a lot of friends, and created tons of content.

Polipoli State Park, Maui, Hawaii

We now have all kinds of Hawaii Stuff, including Hawaii pictures that are very popular backgrounds and wallpaper, and Hawaii posters that help us pay for it all through a popular affiliate program.

Our friends in Hawaii are presented throughout our sites, generating link juice for everyone from organic Kona coffee farmers to the innkeeper of a great Maui bed and breakfast.

When we moved back to Los Angeles, I was back working for the union, but I kept the business going. I had clients from Hawaii who’s business generated most of its revenue from the internet. I started adding clients from New York (drug abuse recovery education videos) and Los Angeles (southern California caterers), where we had contacts.

View from the Empire State Building

Over the years, the content piled up, and I found new ways to deal with it all. Since we were known for photography, we started a photography blog for computer backgrounds and desktop wallpaper pictures. Thousands of people a month visit that blog/gallery site, a hybrid system that works well for picture galleries. We have free downloads of computer background pictures, and all we ask for is credit and a link in return. From abstract photography to high resolution nature photos, from scenic panoramas to gritty urban street scenes of Hollywood, we have a huge selection of photographs for all kinds of visual arts.

Oh, and one last thing about link juice… you can only squeeze so much out of each page!