Professional and Writing Career
Shapps has founded a number of businesses, sometimes under pseudonyms. In 1990, aged 22, Shapps founded PrintHouse Corporation, a design, print, website creation and marketing business in London. He stepped down as a director in 2009.
In 2004 he attended an internet conference posing as 'multimillion-dollar web marketer' Michael Green. In 2006, using the same pseudonym, he gave a tour of the Houses of Parliament to his business partners.
In 2005, he founded HowToCorp, a web business selling self-help guides and a software package, TrafficPaymaster, which creates web pages by "spinning and scraping" content from other sites to attract advertising from Google, breaching Google's code of practice. Using the names Michael Green and Sebastian Fox, Shapps claimed people could "make $20,000 in 20 days guaranteed or your money back". A string of 19 website businesses founded by Shapps (occasionally operating as Michael Green) were later blacklisted by Google for breaches of its rules on copyright infringement, and were banned from carrying Google's advertisements. Many of the companies established by Shapps were later legally transferred to his wife, daughter and mother, and he argues he no longer has any involvement in their operation. In October 2012 the Advertising Standards Authority (United Kingdom) started an investigation into HowToCorp in response to a complaint that its website made misleading claims.
Shapps's publications include How To Bounce Back From Recession (2010), a self-help book sold through HowToCorp and written under the pseudonym Michael Green.
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