Do you remember your first sale?

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BuSo Pro
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The Bragging Thread is filled with huge successes, but that can still seem really far down the road for someone who is still aiming for their first sale / commission / Adsense check, etc.

Let's hear about the first couple bucks you made online, what lead up to it, what happened next...
 
I worked for weeks building my first site in html. My wife was getting annoyed with me for all the time I was putting into learning how to build sites and belittled me when I told her I made my first quarter.

She said something like "You made a quarter? Big fucking deal."

She still is apologizing to me years later.

Don't let other people, even those close to you, piss in your cheerios. Keeping trying even though just about everyone expects, and secretly hopes, for you to fail.
 
My first "big" check was from spamming Craigslist with zip/email gift card offers.

I though I had made it. 2006 was a hell of a time.
 
This information I'm sharing will likely expose my dinosaur status, oh well.

In 1995 I was starting to use the web as a research tool for an author I was working for. This was "download everything" possible- 44k on a 56k modem and sift through it for bits of useful info.

At the time I was a professional track & field athlete (not too glamorous) and had a very deep knowledge of nutrition and supplementation for staying healthy and recovering from some 100 miles per week of training.

As I perused the infantile internet of the day I was struck at how little info and/or product data was out there- and with the USPS charging under $3 for a package to anywhere, well, fuck yeah!

So having had been using computers since companies like Digital, Wang and Amiga were the shit, had done programming in basic, cobol, fortran, and even early C, but never any html or java (at the time).

Within a week I had figured out how to get ripped off by Network Solutions for a $50 domain, get some space via FTP to set up a site, hacked a couple of 56k modems to double the bandwidth with two phone lines ($9 per month in SF, CA), and dissect the code and set up a "key" of html tags and their behavior from existing sites to make it happen.

I was able to create a shopping cart from a company called "americart" which was a basic flat file cgi script that allowed me to take credit cards and sell some products. Rewrote a shitload of articles from other sources about the products and published dozens of duplicate pages and owned Alta Vista baby!

Made a "grid display" with tables and a list of some of the most popular products, skanked some images from anywhere and was able to research product ideas from health magazines- remember those?

Problem was I didn't actually have a credit card account, and was renting a room that turned into an office, so there were some logistical challenges. Went weeks of only sleeping a few hours per day and got good at answering phone calls in the middle of the night from the UK, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, everywhere. It was obvious folks with the dinero were the ones buyiong online!

So I went live and within hours had an order for DHEA, by morning I had 9 orders totalling over $700! Soon to be shipping to three other countries.

All the product I needed was a two day delivery away, so bought enough for 144 orders (maxed out my visa), and shipped before I even got approved for the credit card account.

After about two weeks got an account that had a phone that looked like a pig and charged huge interest- but that was the day I got PAID- and that is what it is all about- orders for those first two weeks totalled $1600! It took all night to run the credit cards, every single one of them was approved!

Within 3 months I was getting over $10k per month in orders, was negotiating my sources down in cost for products, and within 6 months opened a retail store even before it was called "click and mortar". The retail location allowed me to purchase products that people wanted but was unavailable to a "mail-order" business. My company was an anomaly as having been started online first.

The business grew and expanded to 3 stores and within a couple of years was grossing about $8 million annually.

I could tell hundreds of stories about all the shit I had to do myself to keep the internet rolling back then (and now), you think those dickheads that hook up internet now are low IQ... Try a T1 in 1996.

Never stopped evolving with the design and development of web products, got sought out to consult and build systems for other companies. Have since sold the retail grind off, built a web development company and continue to market and build online solutions for large companies and small.

Still work around the clock, hardly ever sleep, make some nice stacks, teach staff how to rock, still fucking awesome shit for me. The internet is still new, it may not seem so easy, but the opportunities are far and wider than ever. It takes a shitload of work in any successful business, just like in 1995 and every year since...
 
First buck online:
Started playing online poker in '06 (was 16-17y old), where some of the training sites gave you a 5$ bankroll if you signed up through their code... .
Made good money, bought a BMW and other stupid shit, while all my friends where still in school and getting pocketmoney... This lasted until 2010-11 when the US-Players got banned, games got harder and I eventually stopped playing.

What went wrong:
I was young and never treated it as a real job even though it was easy money if you put the hours in, only played 1-2 hours a day, didn't review enough hands, should've have gotten more coachings etc.

What I realize now: I never had the work ethic. The "grind" as many of you call it. Now I wish my parents would've forced me as a kid to work in construction or somewhere, where you learn what hard work is.

Now I understand what went wrong back then, and I'm grinding every day. Haven't accomplished too much in IM, but I think I'm on good path.

First Sale:
Started my first site 9 Month ago, it didn't really rank at first because I messed some thinks up (overoptimized it, bought shitty blog posts, paid for spun/stolen content, listened to "gurus" for advice, etc) and was ready to abandon it. I started a new site and forgot about it. 1 Month later I checked my Amazon account and it had generated around 20$ in sales!
 
The Pre-Beginning
This is a long story made short. I'd say around 1997 or 1998 in high school, I began creating my own product that was really just the end result of something I did as a hobby. It was a joke at first.

Coincidentally, some time around then or a little before, my parents had signed up for the internet. I remember it was 14.4 kbps bandwidth, and I was pissed because my old grandmother had 56.6 kbps and couldn't even figure out how to use the computer. We finally upgraded from Windows 3.1 to XP I believe.

I was involved in a very micro-niche of this "industry" i was playing around in, which only existed thanks to the internet bringing us all together. There was one forum where everyone gathered that was very active, and each "established member" would spawn their own forums. I did this on a free platform, but eventually had too many requests for little things that couldn't be done, so I bought a vBulletin license.

At that point, I don't even remember how it happened, but I saw other forums on the web that had this thing called "Adsense," so I signed up, was approved, and maybe made $30 a month on it or less even. I didn't optimize my placement or anything, I actually just crammed two banners in the footer. I had crazy amounts of views and the occasional click though.

I also was selling tons of product to this community, worldwide. Various types. It went well, eventually got some stocked in an e-commerce store that was developed by the owner of the main forum. It all crashed and burned because the owner began neglecting the forum. I eventually decided to "retire" from this industry as well.

All in all, I made an upper four figures as a high school kid not even trying. Then I went to college and forgot all about this type of thing.

The Actual Start
Eventually I graduated college, quit the original industry, graduated again while doing menial labor style work, got a job and then quit the next industry. This day job stuff wasn't for me. I was an enterpreneur in high school and was pressured to "choose a career" and go to college. I don't regret it, but who knows where I'd be now if I was allowed to make my own choices. I wasn't really in a mental position to do that properly anyways though.

Anyways, during the final day job, I remembered that I used to make money online, and I was still a computer and internet nerd, so I began reading. I threw a site together that basically featured my own ramblings.

I remember making a penny on some days from CPM's on Adsense. It became a game... "Can I make a penny 3 days in a row?". Then it was "how many days in a row can I make a penny?" And then traffic climbed some and I started seeing clicks. Then the game started over but with dollars instead of pennies. I wasn't doing any on-page SEO or off-page SEO. Just publishing content.

I grinded so hard at content though. I'd carry a spiral bound notebook with me at the day job and write posts by hand every second i had a chance. I'd at a sentence every chance I could, then I'd go home and type it up and publish it.

Eventually I kept studying and learned about all of the important things like search engine optimization, and not writing about what I enjoyed but very few others did (and it wasn't even a money industry, it was all abstract philosophy stuff).

Then I started a site for the industry I was working in, ended up with Scrapebox and other tools of the sort. Before you knew it, it was $10 a month, $100 a month, $500 a month, $1000 a month, $2000 a month. Eventually I quit the day job. Then immediately, CRASH, penalized.

With my back against the wall, I got creative and started another non-content style site based around a service I could offer. I rebuilt from there, ran into more penalties, eventually went grey hat, more penalties, finally went truly 100% white hat and haven't looked back. A decade went by during this process. I'm not a slow learner, but I'm real stubborn.

Proof is that I've made more selling products and services than I ever have from content based sites. But I'm still enamored by content and information sites, which is what I'm working on now. I know I can make it work after all this experience gained. Once it's established, you can bet that I'm going to develop products in the vertical though.

Funny thing is, it went full circle. I'm back in my original vertical, very broadly instead of that micro-micro-niche.
 
I sold filmcritique.net for like $15 in a NamePros.com auction in 2005, I think it was. Around 2005-2007, you could hand register a domain and sell it the next day for $25-$75 fairly easily, but that kind of easy flip to hopeful speculators went away eventually.
 
First money - Proxies with Adsence monetizing school kids all day long.
First affiliate sale and first check - some ejaculation product for blokes who cum before even putting it in.

Someone's Gotta Do It!
 
I don't know if this really counts, but I was almost 16 when I earned my first $$ online. I got offered/paid $50.00 to advertise a banner on my forum for 30 days... It might seem crazy to most guys here who are still young, but getting $50.00 for doing what I essentially saw as nothing at age 15 was a big deal. Not sure what I did with the money now, but nothing smart!
 
I can, was a few months ago. Feels like a game, literally blew my mind because I thought it was fucking impossible to make money online, especially since I had no resources at the time. I still the best feeling was hitting that big leak in one of my old threads and seeing how my adsense grew and then the next day finding out i had made a couple hundred on amazon.
 
First affiliate check was from AdultFriendFinder in the late 90's.. In my pops' name ;x <3AOLMAPS
 
Made my first online sale around 2007 which was a music track sold and downloaded to a consumer. Within a few months I realised I was missing the point and started to slowly switch across to selling licenses for use of music to businesses.

I always feel the first sale of a new project is the first day of a new phase in a business where your customer's behaviour, choices and feedback become a massive influence on how the business grows and what is prioritised.

For instance, a new client asked about a couple of features they felt were missing, so we chose to jump them to the top of the development list and within a few weeks he had them, but only because he was a market niche we really wanted to grow into.

Anyway, so there.. For me, first sales are more than just the, "yae!" It's about the learning too.
 
I can attest to Ryuzaki's testimony. I was there for all of it. I was even his "boss" at Dairy Queen. He even gambled and won a single $ from me at a digital Darts game, and I cussed so loud, I got grounded. Now I'm super hyped to be on BuSo, and back in the game. Me and my Bro are gonna dominate.
I'm learning a ton here on the forum, and want to thank you all for sharing your knowledge. Being a Gat Dam Bowse ain't easy, but I watch all of you do it. I'm ready.
 
First couple bucks online....

I can't remember the exact year, but it was pretty much when the only affiliate programs around were Adult and AOL was huge. I'll just throw out a range of somewhere between 1999-2000?

I tricked some people on AOL to sign up for my AVS sites at the time, got a check like a month later. First affiliate monies ever.

I had made other money with "online" things way before with doing services as a contracted web developer, but I don't really can't that as true "online" monies.

For a long time after that check, I chased Adult online monies and failed at it for years. The bread and butter was doing service work like being a contracted web developer/marketer.

I got my first Adsense check in like 2006 I think. I had been part of the program for a long time but never focused on it so I never crossed that first $100 threshold. It was mid-2006 I decided to put some effort into it and I finally got my first check from Adsense.

2006 was also my entry into content automation ( I had a WordAI script waaaay before WordAi existed back in 2006 ) and getting into really heavy dark SEO stuff. I guess you can tell how I made my first Adsense check... and yes I still have that Adsense account. lol
 
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My mom had to make a PayPal account for me to get my first payments online because I was too young to open my own
 
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