First Things First
- You're looking for the Altoids 9v USB Charger, right? (Buy it here)
- If you're wondering who I am or what's going on, this might be helpful.

A lot of new people are coming through here thanks to Popular Science and a few new links around the "internet", and I thought rather than having everyone blow through here with nothing but a charger kit, I thought I might try to persuade some of you to stick around.

So:

Who is Aaron?

I'm a 20 21 22 year old writer, gamer, programmer, internet zillionaire (almost), and solver of problems. My name is, get this, Aaron Dunlap. This site was first started just to house some of the essays and reviews I've written, turned into a blog once the word "blog" turned hip and cool, and lately has been used as a launching pad for me to reach my dream of getting paid just for being clever.

What's the deal with the charger kits?

Short version: I saw some other people were making their own little battery powered Firewire charger things for their (older) iPods. I wanted to make a USB version, but I had no idea what I was doing. I spent a week researching circuit design and learning the ins and outs of electricity and the IEEE standard for Universal Serial Buses. Unable to find any of the parts I determined that I'd need at my local RadioShack, I spent the next week tracking down places where I could get all the itty bitty components I needed until I finally found the right distributors and manufactures that were willing to work with me. Having done all that, it seemed like a waste just so I could make myself a little charger do-dad. I wished that there was somewhere that I could have just gotten all the right parts from in one swing, including instructions. So, I thought maybe I'd see if anybody would be willing to buy it from me.

Long version: Read the short version twice in a row.

So how'd you make a store out of it?

In November I put together a very simple PayPal shopping cart store and put it out there for the world. In three days, I was linked from digg.com and got around 100 orders in the first week. At that point, I was just looking at the payments in my PayPal account, labeling envelopes by hand, and sending them off that way.

When the heat from Digg wore off, I took that opportunity to revamp my operation. I learned MySQL databasing so I could put together an order management & tracking system so I could organize things more effectively, and I got a Dymo label printer and a Stamps.com account so I could print labels and postage automatically. Just then, I got linked from BoingBoing.net, one of the most-visited blogs on the net, and from the website of Make Magazine (a magazine for people who.. Make things). Armed with my new technology, I was able to handle the 300 orders I got those 2 weeks.
When I learned that Popular Science was going to run an article about the charger kit, I took that opportunity to ditch the PayPal shopping cart, hand-code a complete inventory/cart/checkout/ordering system from scratch, and try to automate as much of the order fulfillment process as possible (I print the instruction sheets online via Staples in bulk now, rather than standing over a do-it-yourself copy machine for an hour every week, for example.)

So what's the deal with Popular Science? Are they on your payroll?

I don't really know what happened there. From what I can tell, someone from there just ordered one of the kits sometime in November and thought it'd be a good page-filler for one issue. That issue was the March issue, apparently. I guess it was a birthday present.

They never contacted me, and I never contacted them. Imagine my surprise.

Why should I pay you for the kits and instructions when I could just do it all myself?

That's a good question.

I suppose to answer it, I'll pose a different question: Why do you pay McDonalds for hamburgers when you could just make one yourself?

I don't really know the answer, to be honest. Apparently, enough people are willing to pay for the kits.

So you're like, making a bunch of money?

Not so much a "bunch". I have to keep the price low because I don't think anybody would be willing to pay much more than what I'm charging. Between the parts, shipping, envelopes, labels, stamps.com membership fees, bags, printing, and my army of Swedish concubines I'm really just barely pulling a profit.

What do you mean, 'you're a writer'?

I mean, I write. I've written a few cool stories (check out the Gerrardo's Falling series).

What do you mean, 'you're a gamer?

I mean, I game. Oh, I forgot to mention. I work as a writer for GamingHorizon.com a gaming news/opinion site. I write reviews, editorials, all that stuff.

Do I spend all day in front of an Xbox playing Madden or some obscure Japanese RPG? No, I do not.

Update: I keep forgetting to keep this page updated. Since I wrote this, I've sort of taken over Gaming Horizon and have transformed it into GameBump.

What do you mean, 'you're a programmer'?

Every single feature of this website was coded entirely by me. Blog, comments, accounts, messaging system, photo gallery, document browser, search engine, shopping cart, store, scratchpad... I did it all. By myself. In PHP. For free.

That, my friends, is why I don't have a girlfriend.

Do you just blog about your site and your store?

No. I blog about things I've written, about the gaming industry, about technology that interests me, about books I've read, about movies I like, and about things that I like to talk about. Is that so wrong? Yeesh, get off my back.

If you'd like to keep up with my blog with little to no effort, why not add my RSS Feed to your blogroll?