Mark O'Neill

Mark O'Neill is a contributing writer to Help Desk Geek, Online Tech Tips, Switching To Mac, and BackroomTech. He was the managing editor for the sites till end of 2019, making sure the content was top-notch and inspiring the staff.

Mark has been a freelance technology writer since 2004 when he wrote a regular eBay column for AuctionBytes (now renamed eCommerceBytes). He also contributed articles to the now-defunct Bookologist, Google Tutor, and a few other sites now lost to time (although you could probably find them on the Wayback Machine). Then came a couple of years of soul-destroying English teaching work before MakeUseOf asked him in 2007 to become the managing editor.

At that point, the site had 9,000 RSS subscribers, and no writers apart from himself and the owner. By the end of Mark's tenure as Managing Editor in 2013, the site had over 500,000 RSS subscribers and a staff of over 25. Many of the people he hired as tech writers for the first time have gone on to bigger and better things, firmly establishing themselves as tech experts in their respective fields. Some are still at MakeUseOf where Mark watches them with pride.

Until 2016, Mark remained at MakeUseOf as a senior contributor, but he now branched out into other clients and other areas of writing expertise. He has become an expert at cybertechnology and online privacy, SEO, online marketing, and online business. He was the Content Management Director for Quiet Light Brokerage, and a contributing writer to outlets such as Lifehacker, NowSourcing (where a story of his ended up on the front page of Yahoo.com), GroovyPost, Lifewire, Trendblog, Small Business Trends, and PC World.

In 2016, Mark started independent consulting for businesses, advising them on their social media strategies, online marketing, and website SEO. As of mid-2019, Mark is on retainer to a dozen companies.

In 2017, Mark decided to realise a dream of his and started self-publishing his own spy fiction novels on eBook platforms such as Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Nook, Tolino, and many others. With ten books now published, he has received rave reviews for his Department 89 series and Scorpion series. Customers have compared him in reviews to Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, and Mark Dawson.