Since I use this blog as an online journal to pretty much express everything in my heart, everything that I do, everything I’ve ever done and I have at least one devoted fan, I wanted you all to know what I’ve been working on pretty diligently most all of my life. I started my very first e-commerce site way back in 1998 called Chopa Imports, LLC. I had started a spiritual gifts import store as a way to pay for my trips back and forth to see my Tibetan teacher who lived in Nepal.

The word Chöpa, is the Tibetan word for “offering,” as everything that I was doing was basically laser focused on trying to find a way to live part-time in Asia so I could see him. He was quite advanced in age and I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to have that many years with him, and I was right. So, when I’d come back to the United States this was still the days where everyone was asking for printed catalogs if you want to sell something and I didn’t have enough money to print a catalog. So, there was a lot of buzz about something called the Internet, or better yet, the… world wide WEB! I rented a digital camera and took pictures of all my Dharma supplies and some things I brought back from Nepal to sell and “uploaded” them.

I think I purchased the original domain in 1997 and put up one of the very first e-commerce sites, you know pre-Geocities where Yahoo, was the primary search engine with a gray background, with a mind-blowing bright blue blaze of color for text links. At one time, someone or other had recognized me as one of the pioneers of online commerce. 1998 was the very first inception of online business, and this website archive captured screenshots from the very early days!

It’s funny to look back and see how much progress we’ve made over the years! I don’t mean to brag because I must be one of the very worst Internet e-commerce people out there because I never really made all together that much money online. I did go back and study website design and development and search engine optimization and I think I liked the creative aspect and creative blogging more than I was ever was that proficient in selling anything. But all in all I honestly must say, I just spent my life being a quintessential dharma bum, and it wasn’t until the last third of my life that I sort of settled down. I wanted to show you some of the offerings that I have created, none of them grandiose but each one crafted with whatever small talent I have with things that are precious to me.