Once Upon A Time

History

Shopping Bookmarks originally started as a hobby for Kim Rowley back in 1998. She was sharing coupons and deals with friends and family while teaching herself how to make websites. She told told everyone to “bookmark” her site in their browser for when they wanted to shop.

When those family and friends starting sharing the deals (this was before social media when people loved to get emails), the website took off, and the rest is history. The website has went through many transformations over the years.

Check out Kim’s commentary below on the timeline of Shopping Bookmarks’ website designs.

1999

This was my very first website that I created in Frontpage and hosted for free on Tripod. I actually loved those bright colors. And people loved free phonecards to use on their landlines. 

2001

My graphic designer uncle, David from iGroupStudios, automated some of my site using coldfusion programming. The smiley face even winked! He also convinced me that my “pretty” pastel color theme should be more “manly” to appeal to both genders.

2003

The site design was updated, adding seasonal outfits to the smiley (as seen above with the pilgrim’s hat for Thanksgiving).

2007

The site was reconfigured from coldfusion to using php technology. I kept the “flaming” hot deal icon (I loved that graphic, too).

2010

Another upgrade was done to the front and back end using Rubys on Rails. I was moving away from adding coupons as it was too cumbersome and started adding more deals.

2012

All coupons were ditched and the site was moved to the original Shareist platform to showcase deals and shopping lists.

2016

Shopping Bookmarks briefly tried to compete in the cash back world but couldn’t compete with cash-back giants like Ebates.com.

2017

Shopping Bookmarks now couldn’t compete with any corporate big wigs and the domain was fowarded to “Kim’s Shopping Blog“.

2019

Baby, we’re back in business!