Once upon a time, there were 3 kids in college and an overdue mortgage...

Hi, I'm George. I am a software engineer by trade and have been doing it for longer than I care to admit. Back in 2012, the universe blessed me with tremendous financial calamities that nearly put me and my family out on the street. With my back to the wall, I resolved to put my skills to the test to help get us out of this situation.

At about 3 AM on December 26, 2012, I launched MerchantWords – an Amazon keyword tool that helps online sellers figure out how buyers are searching for products. I nearly forgot to put on a logo, so I created one in a flash and slapped it on the site.

Baby Steps

I've done this internet thing long enough to not suffer from the Field of Dreams Syndrome. If I build it no one will come unless they know about it. So I hit up Reddit to try to get some love. And love I got!

Then we headed to the e-commerce conference circuit, and that is where my real education began. Talking to customers, like yourself, and solving real business problems with something as quotidian as keywords. Imagine that.

Growing Up

I wish I could say it was all easy, but as a 3 person operation – me, my wonderful wife, and anyone in the family who was free to fill in – we had our share of trials and tribulations. The world was hungry for our data and we did everything we could to keep the service going.

More trade shows, more visits to customers, more partnerships all equaled an overloaded inbox and ever-growing backlog of development work. A good problem to have, to be sure, but certainly not scalable. By then, we'd amassed over 70 million keywords, and that database kept on growing.

Scaling Up

I'm smart enough to know that the way to address these challenges wasn't to simply strap a supercharger on to my schedule. Nope – I needed to upgrade everything. So, we did.

Up first was our search estimate algorithms. As a software developer, I know that things can always be done better, and the next logical step for a dataset as large as ours was to move into the world of Data Science. In the process, we made great improvements to our tracking and estimation.

We don't exactly know how big this idea of ours can get, but we have really good imaginations of what could be. So, welcome to the journey! It is going to be fun.

Give our keyword tool a try, and please let us know how we can help!

George Lawrence
CEO and Founder