I’ve been building things on the internet since 1998. That’s not a boast — it’s just context. A lot has changed since then, and I’ve had a front-row seat to most of it.
My story isn’t one of some secret discovered or a magical system that prints money. It’s just an average American kid who decided early on that the conventional path wasn’t going to work for him — and spent the next 25+ years figuring out an alternative one that does.
I’m not showing off a big house or an exotic car. I’m a guy who makes a living online, runs a business I’m proud of, and has designed a life that works for me and my family. I work from home — or wherever I happen to plant my laptop. Dressing up for me means putting on pants, since I’m usually in a t-shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. I still own an RV and take it out when I can, but these days with older kids, life looks a little different than it used to.
That’s my life. That’s who I am.
There is a backstory though. And it’s worth telling — because it isn’t linear, and it definitely didn’t go according to plan.
My First Jobs… And That Magazine Article That Changed It All…
My first job was as janitor to a hydraulics shop, cleaning everything from the kitchen to the toilets. I even had to clean the metal shavings from all the hydraulic machines. Then, I “upgraded” to a job at McDonalds. Yeah, I was the guy who took your hamburger order.
In school, I was basically a loner. You know, the “smart kid” who had no fashion sense whatsoever (technically, I still don’t). Once I graduated, I guess I came out of my shell and came to be comfortable with people. I had always had a love of computers – perhaps partly out of a discomfort with people.
That hobby intersected with a twist of fate when I read an article in Yahoo Internet Life about how to build a website in 20 minutes or less. Before long, I was a webmaster of a beautifully horrible little website, complete with blinking text and animated icons. I started it on my ISP… then moved it to Geocities. As crappy as that little website was, however, I had no idea it would be the beginning of what would end up being my life’s work.
Funny how it is often the small things which end up defining you.
College. Beer. Pool.
I went to college and got a degree in Information Systems Management from the University of South Florida. During this time, I worked a college job at Sam’s Club. I started out as the “cart jockey”. You know, the dude who goes out into the parking lot to fetch your cart and bring it back into the store. Lovely, I must say.
Eventually, I moved “up” to cashier, then supervisor. During this whole time, I was working on my online business. I had started PCMech, a hobbyist technology site, and had managed to get it up to a point where it was actually making me some side money. So, college, for me, was basically being a mediocre student, working at Sam’s, and shooting a lot of pool with my buddies and drinking beer by the pitcher.
I actually got to be pretty good at the game of billiards. Of all things.
By 2001, it was coming time to graduate and get started with a real life. I was making enough money online to make Sam’s Club seem like a colossal waste of time. I had stayed with it for the social life, but eventually grew a brain, put in my two weeks notice, and quit.
I have not had a “real job” since.
I graduated college with zero student debt, mainly because I was able to write checks for tuition due to my online business. That’s something I’m proud of.
21-Year-Old Kid Sees Million-Dollar Pay Day. But…
Now, imagine this. I’m still living in my parents’ house and I’m running this blog. Then, all of a sudden, I got an offer to BUY my tech site for a sum of a little over a million bucks.
Jack pot!
This was in the midst of the dot-com boom and people thought that anything you did online was a pile of gold. And this company wanted to buy me out. Oh, HELL yah! So, I signed. You float a 7-figure number in front of a 21-year old kid and shit happens.
And… shit did happen. And it was called reality.
The dot-com bubble burst. The company that bought my site started to fold up and get into all kinds of hanky panky. They weren’t paying me what was contractually obligated and things basically… sucked.
But… I still controlled my site (even though I didn’t technically own it). So, I had a bright idea…
What if I sold something on this site?
I got my site back from the grips of this sinking company, learned a lesson about buy-outs (hint: stock options aren’t worth shit from a non-public company), then proceeded to expand my business once more.
Only this time… I started to approach it like a real business.
Tech Site Turns Into A Real Business…
Like any business owner, I wanted to make more money. That eventually led me into the world of online marketing — what makes people tick, conversions, copywriting. All the things bloggers usually ignore.
I applied that stuff directly to PCMech. Instead of depending entirely on advertising, I started selling things. I dug in, applied what I was learning, and watched that tech blog grow into a six-figure business running out of a bedroom in my house.
I’m genuinely thankful the buyout fell apart. It pushed me onto a path that proved far more sustainable than a one-time payout ever would have been.
Eventually though, a new itch emerged. I’d become fascinated by online business and marketing as a discipline — and I felt I had something to offer a blogging world still largely stuck on banner ads. So in 2008, I pivoted.
Time To Grow Up.
Through all of this I was expanding on other fronts too.
I met my wife Malika on eHarmony (we’re still waiting on that commercial). We got married in 2007 and had our first child by the end of that year. Suddenly it wasn’t just about sustaining my own lifestyle — I had a family to think about.
So I launched what became DavidRisley.com, applying everything I’d learned from a decade of running PCMech from day one. The business side grew faster than the tech blog ever had — and it didn’t take long before it became the primary revenue driver.
The Blog Marketing Academy – And The Pivot Nobody Saw Coming
In 2012, I re-branded DavidRisley.com as the Blog Marketing Academy. I did this primarily to allow for expansion. I wasn’t interested, necessarily, in building up all this stuff around me and my name. I’m just a guy who decided to make a living in a non-traditional way — and I don’t proclaim to be any more than that.
My skill is communication and teaching. I’m good at putting things into plain English and wading through complexity to find the big picture. That’s what I brought to the world of teaching online business.
I’m also pretty decent with the tech stuff. Years of running a tech blog will do that to you.
For years, BMA was primarily a training business. Courses. Membership programs. Coaching. I helped a lot of people build their online businesses, and I’m proud of that work.
But something kept nagging at me.
Student after student would grasp the strategy. They’d understand what they needed to do. And then they’d hit a wall — because WordPress ate them alive. They understood the ideas, but they found it incredibly frustrating and difficult to actually implement it within WordPress.
I’d always been the person in the room who could solve those problems. I’d just never leaned into it as a service.
Around 2021, I decided to stop resisting the obvious.
Okay, Fine. I’m a Tech Guy.
I started offering done-for-you WordPress services — quietly at first, then more intentionally. What I found was that there was serious demand for someone who could handle the entire technical layer of a WordPress business. Somebody you could talk to like a normal person and trust.
That evolved into Concierge.
Concierge is a WordPress management service built specifically for creators, coaches, membership site owners, and small teams who are serious about their online business but don’t want to spend their life fighting with technology. I run the hosting infrastructure, handle performance tuning, manage updates and security, troubleshoot problems, and act as the go-to tech person for my clients’ entire WordPress operation.
The training side of BMA is still here — the blog, the newsletter, the videos. But, Concierge is the core. I no longer spend much time selling online courses.
It’s not the path I originally planned. But it’s the one that made sense — and honestly, it’s some of the most satisfying work I’ve done in 25 years of doing this.
It comes down to this…
Back in college, I decided that the 9-5 and the life in a cubicle wasn’t for me. Not everybody is cut out for it. There are people in this world who want to build something of their own — people who want to make a living on their terms, run something they’re proud of, and not spend every day asking permission.
I’m here for those people. BMA is here for those people.
And if your WordPress site is the thing standing between you and that goal — well, that’s kind of my whole thing now.
Find out how Concierge works →
I’m glad you’re here.