August, 2009 on top of Mt. Elbert

My name is Patrick Kelly (I go by ‘PJK’ online).  I am 22 and reside in just outside of Denver, Colorado, where I am currently running my own internet media company, PJK Media (although I have a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines – May, 2011).

A bit about my life so far:

What is this blog about?

Well, everyone has their own thing to talk about. PJKDirect.com is my place to vent, rant, share my tips/knowledge, and chronicle my ideas and thoughts about my adventures both online and around the world. Right now there are four categories: Advertising, Sports, Search Engine Stuff, and Other. I plan to expand that someday, but for now, they work.

I find the internet to be an amazing thing.  It allows people to connect in their own homes with the rest of the world.  It is fascinating to me.  I’ve been building websites online since the early 2000′s, which has led to many different adventures online.  I’ve run several large forums, websites, and recently started PJK Media, a performance based internet marketing company.   I will often discuss different marketing techniques that I have come across, and post stuff as I learn.  I hope you will learn from my experiences.  I also enjoy traveling, so I will post pictures, reports, and reviews of places I go.  I eventually plan to do a world tour, which I am very excited about. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this blog, don’t hesitate to let me know.

What made me interested in the internet?

I was excited back in 2000/2001 when my father first purchased our home computer. I was happy to be able to mess around with a computer and type text into word documents. For some reason I found that quite fascinating. After getting a dial-up connection, I discovered the internet. With the internet, my brother and I began trading sports cards online. Over the course of 2-3 years, my brother and I quadrupled the size of our collections and made our collections increase 5-times+ in value. Because we each needed some way to display our collections to others so we could coordinate trades, my brother and I each created a website. Over the years, we kept finding new ways to improve the appearance and functionality of the sites.

During these same years, my brother and I would buy and sell stuff on eBay to make a little money. Although it wasn’t much, at the time it seemed like a fortune.

In 2005, I experimented a bit with Google Adsense, but it didn’t seem to do anything. It wasn’t until June of 2006 that I started to study

Overlooking the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado

how internet advertising worked and how to make money with it. Since then, I have created many more websites, sold several websites, and learned a lot of internet marketing and such. I made a goal to learn something new each day, and it is quite amazing how much information has accumulated.  I now pay my rent each month via the marketing I do on the internet, and I have paid for the majority if my expenses this way as well, including a portion of my university tuition.

What are my hobbies/interested outside the internet?

For one, I am a sports fan. I like everything to it, from playing to watching. I grew up with 2 older brothers, so we definitely played our fair share of almost every sport. My favorite teams are as follows:
Baseball: Colorado Rockies
Hockey: Colorado Avalanche
Football: Denver Broncos
Basketball: Denver Nuggets

I don’t especially pay attention to soccer, golf, or other sports. I do enjoy skiing, fishing, and being in the wilderness. I am currently playing ice hockey for a YMCA League in Boulder, Colorado, which is a blast.

Blindfold solving at the Denver Open 2008

Aside from that, I am very interested in speedsolving puzzles. In December of 2005, my older brother showed me a video of his friend solving a Rubik’s cube in around 70 seconds. I was quite amazed, but didn’t think

Some of my puzzle collection

much about it at the time. In late February of 2006, I heard in the news about the 3×3 world record being broken at a time of 11.13 seconds (by Leyan Lo). After hearing that, I went out and bought a cube off eBay and started learning how to solve it. Since then, I never looked back. I kept learning new ways to solve it and get faster. I have since attended several competitions around the US and the world, including the 2007 US Open Rubik’s Cube Championship, which was the national competition of the year. It was in June of 2007 in Chicago, IL.  I attended the 2009 World Championship in Dusseldorf, Germany as well.  Instead of me listing my official times, you can find my World Cube Association official profile here, since my rankings are constantly changing. However, since starting, I have placed top 100 in the world in nearly every event I have competed in at one time or another. I am currently averaging around 12-13 seconds for a standard 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube.

The video below is an average (in the final round) of a competition I attended in February, 2011.  It was the winning average (for 3×3 Speedsolve) for this competition (held in Colorado Springs, Colorado):