New Goals, New Progress, and a Brief Look Back

I don’t know why, but I’ve always been fascinated by making money. This isn’t to say I was obsessed with working 80 hour weeks at a high-paying job, but rather the ways to make money that people had never thought of. This included arbitrage of all sorts, examining various ways that companies marketed products, or simply following those that achieved success by accident and finding out why. When I first started up a site categorizing the free stuff that companies were giving away at the time, I was absolutely floored by the amount of money I pulled in.

Consider this for a moment: You’re a young high school student dabbling with computers since the whole world is obsessed with the new economy. Companies like Amazon and Yahoo are just starting up, and the stock market is on an absolute tear. You don’t have a lot of time to focus on it, seeing as when you’re not at school you’re on the football and lacrosse fields or the wrestling mat. There’s time here and there though, so you spend the Saturday and Sunday afternoons before you go out to the movies or the mall or the evening game researching it. Everything is easy, people are making money hand over fist, and even though you don’t know all that much about the process, you decide you want a piece of the action. Doing some primitive coding and categorizing various affiliates, you throw up a site dedicated to tracking and displaying free offers from various .com companies.

Your first month yields little, 0.87 cents, and you feel discouraged a moment. Hours of work and toil, and at the end of the day you’d be better off flipping burgers. No matter, you decide, you had a great time doing it and at this point the only thing to do is continue on and build on what you already have. The next month goes much better, netting over 100$. What a moment it is, pulling in that first check for a substantial (at the time!) amount of money. You don’t even want to cash it, just mount it on your wall and display your newfound accomplishment. As far as you’re concerned you are an overnight success, just like all of the booming companies you hear about on the news. You are that guy. Frank Inc.

It’s not over yet though, you need to continue updating, finding new deals, give the people what they want. You have to keep the ball rolling, who knows what the next step is from here. You network, link other sites like yours, build a link campaign before most knew what it was. Another month of fun, learning, and profit goes by, and your next check? $2,000. You don’t even know what to do with it, so you take it to your parents, who immediately wonder if you’re actually a thief of some kind. Victory. You’ve hit your goal, you can do this forever…you can…

Fast forward a bit! The Dot com bubble burst a few months later, the offers dried up, and I went to college. Most of the money I earned during that stint either paid for vacation with my friends or more importantly funded my college education. I still had some leftover debt from loans when I was finished, but I also gave myself a $10,000 scholarship. I now work at a regular job in the Finance Industry, but I never forget where I came from, or the feeling I got from that first check. My goals are now similar: make money online through conventional or unconventional means and have fun doing it!

I’m tweaking out my progress bar, but I think a good start is to build up enough alternate income to cover my rent (technically it’s 363$ per month, but I’m shooting for $400).

Until next time..
-Xias