There are still many aspects of the world wide web that require the knowledge and skills of a true webmaster. And when it comes to the intricacies of website maintenance and repair, search engine optimization, web design, and much more, there’s no one more qualified to help you navigate the world wide web than the Long Island Webmaster himself, Greg Grigorian.
Oh, and let’s not forget the organization’s Chief Happiness Officer and official Mouser, Greg’s cat Bella.
The term "webmaster" encompasses a great many skills and responsibilities. A jack of all trades, they essentially create, maintain, and manage websites; basically, anything and everything pertaining to websites and how they function is the webmaster’s purview, and no one on Long Island does it better than Greg.
The first webmaster in the world was Tim Berners-Lee, who released the world wide web along with the first web browser on August 6th, 1991, Tim also established the term "webmaster" to identify anyone who was a website owner, Google was actually created for webmasters to index their websites on the Google search engine, and Tim Berners-Lee advised the Google team on how to create a better search engine for webmasters. Greg aims to continue to educate people about the term "webmaster" as, oddly enough, a lot of people in the website services industry or with a website in-general don't know what a webmaster is. Without Tim Berners-Lee, the first webmaster, you wouldn't have websites or apps like you do today, and webmasters continue to operate the web from the backend!
As Long Island Webmaster, Greg mainly specializes in website repair and maintenance.
“Most of the calls I get are when a website crashes…when that happens, people will get a message to contact their web hosting service or webmaster, from there they'll Google 'webmaster Long Island' or a similar term and that's how they find me,” he said. “I'll be able to repair their website and then I'll sell them on my per-month maintenance package which enables website security along with keyword ranking (Google likes updated websites), as well as additional services such as backlinks, things like that."
While Greg less frequently engages in services such as website design, he's nonetheless fully capable of doing so if a client's site has crashed to the point of being unrecoverable and a new one is needed from scratch. In fact, there appears to be absolutely nothing that Greg can't do when hunched over his keyboard. Greg even types 120 words per minute and is known to have a Typing Competition on an annual basis in the Long Island area, last year was in five towns!
“Being a webmaster is like being a maestro in a symphony,” Greg noted. “When he's conducting the players of musical instruments, the players are the masters of the instruments, but the maestro also knows these instruments and how to coordinate them all at once. That's akin to what a webmaster does. A webmaster needs to know all the components of all the web skills.”
A quick rundown of the many services Long Island Webmaster provides includes website repairs, website design, website transfers, server database cleanup and repair, search engine optimization, website management, website crash recovery, server/database/website malware cleanup, server/website set-up and installation, and much more; Greg even offers webmaster classes on a variety of subjects, including how to manage and maintain your own business website.
Greg at a New York Arm Wrestling Association event at the American Dream mall.
Greg founded Long Island Webmaster in 2016, later registering his iconic domain name the following year. At the time he was doing web-related work for an attorney in Long Beach that specializes in representing Amazon Sellers on Amazon.com – C.J. Rosenbaum – who he described as being a tough yet very fair employer, an early mentor in business to Greg Grigorian. Rosenbaum gave Greg the opportunity to prove that he could create a website that would attract website traffic and lead to clients, retainers, and more.
"He said, 'show me what you’ve got,' and he was already threatening to fire me on the first day. But that was just how he is, and some people fold under pressure, while others thrive." Greg said. “When I started there, his website was getting, like, 60 people a month, and after my first month there he got 300, the second month 600, and so on. He was gaining tremendous amounts of website traffic and that was converting into money for the company."
Despite Rosenbaum’s admiration for his talented new hire, he also understood that with his skill set, Greg should potentially strike out on his own at some point and start his own business. To that end, the attorney encouraged Greg to do so, even generously offering to put up the supplies and capital required to get Long Island Webmaster off the ground.
"He said I should continue working there and start my own business on the side, and he was confident that I would grow," Greg said. "He gave me the computers, the equipment, helped me with advertising, whatever I needed. He also gave me more hours at my job and a raise, which really helped out."
Greg went out and started spreading his name around in an attempt to grow Long Island Webmaster, and found name-dropping Rosenbaum often helped to open doors, given the lawyer’s well-known reputation; when people found out that Greg is the one that developed Rosenbaum’s website – amazonsellerslawyer.com – for his internationally-known practice, people sat up and took notice, and from there his business grew exponentially.
"A lot of Amazon Sellers and Ecommerce guys would say to me, 'You know CJ Rosenbaum? You built CJ Rosenbaum's website?' People were really impressed," he said.
Code essentially runs through Greg's blood; his mother owns a piano school and his father a Mercedes repair shop, and as a child both of them were hopeful that their son would follow in one of their respective footsteps. However, a fateful trip to summer camp one year instilled in him an intense interest in computers, and when he arrived home, both his parents were initially dismayed when he told them his new career ambition in life...especially his father.
“I was 14 years old when I told my father I wanted to be a webmaster when I came back from camp, and he turned to my mother and said, 'they made him gay.'" Greg laughed.
However, Greg's parents became quite supportive of his new endeavor; Greg would often stay up late at night using the family's computer – which they moved into his room – as well as doing intense webmaster-related research at the library and delving into what information he could find online during the days of dial-up internet. Greg really admired former and current webmasters like Elon Musk, Larry Paige, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and the list goes on, because there are so many great webmasters, especially a lot of the current billionaires like Mark Cuban (broadcast.com).
Today, Greg whiles away the hours of the day typing on his keyboard serving his many satisfied customers while his trusty black cat, Bella, hangs out with him, offering support in exchange for chin scratches.
"In addition to being the Chief Happiness Officer, she's also Long Island Webmasters' official expert Mouser," he said. "But we don't have any mice, so she must be really good at her job."
Chief Happiness Officer Bella.
And when he isn't repairing websites, Greg has a side hustle that would be wholly unexpected to many for a keyboard warrior- he's the co-owner of the New York Arm Wrestling Association (NYAWA), with the organization setting up matches throughout New York State in order to test the muscle and might of competitors - both male and female - from around the world.
"My father was actually at the first NYAWA event back in 1977 in Sunnyside, New York when he was 14 years old," he said. "My father competed and wasn't able to win the amateurs, and now 44 years later his son becomes an owner of the organization."
Greg noted that having taken something that started as a childhood interest and turned it into a blossoming and successful career is something he takes a great deal of pride in, and is looking to continue to grow Long Island Webmaster and serve his customers well into the future.
"This business is all about establishing trust with your customers. Every time somebody contacts me, the trust needs to be established. Once I fix their website within 1 to 2 hours. I show them how I do it, and I don't charge them until after I fix it, so the trust is already established,” he said. "This is what I do for 16 hours a day, literally eight hours on the phone doing sales and eight hours of repairs. This is a one-man operation and I have to be on top of things. This is my life...I have a girlfriend but she's second place compared to this job. That's the amount of dedication I have to it, I'm here for the long-run, not a short-time."
Greg has had the opportunity to work with different brands such as Serendipity 3 (Selena Gomez), Copacabana Nightclub (John Juliano), Extreme Cage Fighting (Christian DeFiris), and has worked on over 400 websites from larger websites to smaller websites. Greg is dedicated to living his life as a webmaster and giving clients the right advice and guidance from his experience working with hundreds of websites, Greg has an incentive to help his clients, because by extension, he is helping the Long Island Webmaster brand grow larger each week!
You can also catch Greg on Nassau Community College Radio once a year, NCC invites him every year to a radio interview for students, alumni, staff, and business owners.
To find out more about the Long Island Webmaster and the services he can provide for you, please call 516-499-1914 or visit https://