udi-industry-review

Since this is the first post on this brand new blog, I’m basically going to repeat what I wrote in my ‘About Me’ page.

 
This is my first attempt of having a blog on ‘serious’ matters. In the past I’ve had several personal blogs, and not only really enjoyed it, but was quite successful as well (one of them was the #1 blog for a small website for a period of several months).

 
Who am I? My name is Udi Schlessinger. I’m currently trying my luck as an entrepreneur. After working for several years as a software developer and a team lead, I realized that pure programming isn’t for me. So I went ahead, moved to London, and did a Ph.D. in Computer Science (specifically, biologically inspired computing: I created agents that have neural networks as brains and get smarter through evolution. You know, very sci-fi stuff, matrix-like evil-AI thingies).

 
Unfortunately, I graduated exactly when this recession started (Oct’ 2007 – which is a bit funny considering I finished my M.Sc. in May 2000 – when the previous recession started. In fact, I’ve never worked in a period that was not a recession!). So not only I was ‘fresh’ out of school in terms of my academic background, NY isn’t particularly a good place for people who want to work in areas that relate to my Ph.D. That is, unless you’re willing to work for a financial place that likes this sort of thing. Fortunately for me, I actually like finance (that was my focus at college). So I found myself working for a huge investment bank, which was a new experience for me, and yet unfortunately, one I did not like.

 
Therefore, in April I decided that I’m going to pursue my own thing. I set a 5-stage multi-year plan, and started. I won’t elaborate much on this, but I will say the first stage consists of getting enough passive income using affiliate marketing & website creation to survive on, and the second stage consists of creating tools for affiliate marketing (a market I think is far from mature). I’m still at stage 1 but hopefully will move past that soon.

 
After doing this for several months I realized I need to voice my opinions. I learned so so much. I met numerous interesting people in the NY affiliate meetups. I learned what to do and what not to (still remember my first Google slap). Since there’s only so much one can write in Facebook status lines or say to friends, I decided to create this blog!

 
My goal is to discuss various issues: affiliate marketing, SEO, Google vs Yahoo vs Bing, the market, Artificial Intelligence in affiliate marketing (and elsewhere) and basically everything I can think of. I hope you’ll find this interesting!

 
If you feel like sending me a note, please, by all means go ahead. My email is Udi at IndustryReview.org. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/uschles