STURGEON PRODUCTIONS, LLC      (1996 - 2008)

Eric started creating websites when he was 14 years old . This was in 1996, before high speed Internet and even before Google existed. What started as a hobby became a business when traffic to his websites grew and Eric realized that he could generate income by placing banner ads on his websites.

Eric partnered with several large advertising firms that represented hundreds of other publishers and sold ad space to advertisers, many of which were large Fortune 500 companies. Eric earned income based on the number of impressions (CPM) of the ads, the number of clicks on the ads (pass-through), and/or commission on purchases made by his visitors on affiliated websites, such as Amazon.com.

At its peak, Eric's network of websites attracted over 11,000 unique visitors per day and 50,000 page views per day. His most popular websites were "fan sites" dedicated to popular celebrities at the time, including 2Pac, Notorious BIG, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods. He also had a very popular jokes site. Through effective search engine optimization, he was able to secure first page listings in search engines for several of these websites. He also benefited by being a first mover. For example, he developed an unofficial Tommy Hilfiger website several years before the clothing company developed an official website. As a result, his website was the only source on the Internet for information about the clothing line.

Before there was Facebook, there were the high school gossip message boards on Eric's website. In South-Eastern Connecticut, these message boards were extremely popular, reaching up to 500 new posts every day from students in high schools located in South-Eastern CT and Rhode Island. They became so infamous that articles were written about the message boards in several newspapers, including The New London Day and The Providence Journal. Eric was also interviewed about his website on a local cable access show. After graduating high school, the message boards became too difficult to monitor, so Eric decided to shut them down.

Eric also created several professional web sites for small businesses after word was spread by friends and family members about his web design skills. He offered web page design at very low prices and even hosted the web sites for free so that he could build up his clientele.

Today Eric still occassionally designs websites for small businesses but does not pursue new clients and no longer operates his content-based websites because the workload would not be manageable while working full time and completing his MBA part-time.