20 years ago I designed my first website ...

Strictly speaking, I commissioned a web developer to design a website to my specification. It was called EasyPeasyWay and it was a directory designed to house all the best self-help resources and products I could find. Y'know, stuff that actually worked.

I worked tirelessly on the architecture, the user experience, how the products would be uploaded, reviewed, accessed (I had to make money somehow ;) I even premiered it at a health and wellness exhibition in London. It was great, but for one thing: I couldn't find any self-help products or services I TRULY believed in enough to recommend. So the site was empty. In fact it was a bit of a £20k mistake all-in-all.

Things have changed a lot in the 20 years or so since. For one thing, web design has come on in leaps and bounds. You can still get a great web designer to pull you a site together (and waaay cheaper these days). Or you can access templates to build-your-own site from providers like Strikingly.com. Or you can create something entirely of your own design on good old WordPress. That's actually where I started the site you're seeing now.

Things have also changed MASSIVELY in the self-help industry as it's now reputed to be worth $12 billion globally per year. The number of published self-help books ALONE increased by 60% between 2015 and 2022 (both sources: https://gitnux.org/self-help-industry-statistics/) and, guess what? I STILL DON'T RATE MANY OF THEM.

So, here we are 20 years later. I built the website again, only this time, it turns out I had to build the products I wanted to feature on it, first.