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I was an internet millionaire. AMA. : IAmA
Those fond memories are good enough for me. I accomplished what other people spend their whole life trying to accomplish. I lived a life that other people can only dream of. It would be nice to still have it, but I don't think you can appreciate something until you lose it. Everyone wants to be a millionaire but so few ever become one.
I was living in my car when I first started the website. I had to shower/shave at the gym. I brushed my teeth in gas station bathrooms. At only 19 I saw both homelessness and what its like to be a millionaire. It was an amazing experience.
No matter where you are in life right now, you can become anything you want. I spent 12 hours a day reading programming & business books in Barnes & Noble Bookstore. The only reason why people aren't successful is because they don't want it bad enough. I was willing to do whatever it took to be an "internet entrepreneur" like they show in the magazines.
It's too easy to give up. Flipping your bad situation into a good one is hard, but if you want to be successful then it's just what you have to do. The only alternative is to stay in your bad situation.. forever.
1) I kept trying a lot of different ideas but abandoned many of them. This particular one had lots of people interested in it and grew viral quickly. All I was trying to do was get some opinions from people about the site and then I checked the stats a few days later and it had massive traffic. At that point I knew it was worthy of my time.
2) It evolved daily. I basically just got it up and running even though it was shitty, and as it grew I kept expanding, updating, etc. Whenever I spend too much time trying to "perfect" a site, I usually abandon it before it even has a chance, so I try to just get SOMETHING up and running so I can see if at least the concept has potential, even if it looks and runs like shit.
3) Started out on shared hosting, moved to a dedicated server, then multiple dedicated servers with round-robin, then to a dozen clustered servers, then added PHP caching and hired an admin to optimize the web server and mysql.
4) I was shocked how much money I owed in taxes. The website was almost purely profit besides the servers. I didn't have many tax deductions, etc. I didn't keep receipts for a lot of things because I didn't realize how many things like TVs/computers/cell phones can be written off. Even some of my dinners could have been written off. I would have owed a lot less in taxes if I talked to an accountant before hand, but it all happend so fast.
5) It went viral. I looked at the 2-3 sites that offered something similar and figured out what could be improved. I never let my competitor's outdo me on features or anything else. I always offered EVERYTHING they had and more. Once we were huge, I did some search engine optimization and we were ranked number one on Google for a long time... that helped us grow to be within the Alexa top 500 for a short while.
6) Clickbank (but only offer products related to your niche), Zango (out of business), CPXInteractive (pop-ups), Adbrite (banners/full page ads), and Text-link-ads.
7) My site had user generated content, user moderators, etc. The users ran the site. I just enjoyed the profits while they made it for me. They only cared about the content and didn't mind that the owner of the site was getting rich from it. A few hardcore loyal users made me most of my money and I'm glad they were on my site and not a competitor's.
When I first started the site I took content from all of my competitor's sites. It basically got popular because I condensed several sites content into a one-stop-shop. It didn't matter to me morally because we were all in the gray area of legality anyways. I wanted to be the best of my niche and I was willing to do anything to get there.
Haha \/\/\/
I was dating a girl at the time who was always crazy horny and she was so hot. She could have been dating Brad Pitt or something. I still beat off to her pictures till this day. She was too hot for me.
Anyways, I spent 20k to fly us to Florida on a private jet. We had a $300 champange breakfast (didn't even know what it was until after they served us) and then I rented a Lamborghini Murcielago for the weekend and we went parasailing, jetsking, some mini two person submarine thing and abunch of other fun stuff.
Then I paid one of the hotel staff $200 to go buy sex toys, lube, etc. for later that night. He put them in the room while I was out so they would be ready. I had him put all the batteries n stuff in too. We got really high and drunk. She couldn't walk the next day. Most of her friends that heard the story wanted me to treat them to a similar weekend.. including the sex, but I didn't want to get used so I usually said no. Money does get you laid.. even with the hottest chicks.
30k gone in one weekend. Went through several bottles of Cristal, Dom Perignon, and Petron. We made a lot of friends down there and I let them beat the shit out of the Murcielago rental before I returned it. It was so much fun.
There was a three-some before the weekend ended but I was too f*cked up to remember. The only proof of it happening is that I woke up with two naked hot girls in my bed.. oh and the pictures I found when I took a look at the digital camera on the plane when we were heading back.
I was an internet millionaire. AMA. : IAmA
Those fond memories are good enough for me. I accomplished what other people spend their whole life trying to accomplish. I lived a life that other people can only dream of. It would be nice to still have it, but I don't think you can appreciate something until you lose it. Everyone wants to be a millionaire but so few ever become one.
I was living in my car when I first started the website. I had to shower/shave at the gym. I brushed my teeth in gas station bathrooms. At only 19 I saw both homelessness and what its like to be a millionaire. It was an amazing experience.
No matter where you are in life right now, you can become anything you want. I spent 12 hours a day reading programming & business books in Barnes & Noble Bookstore. The only reason why people aren't successful is because they don't want it bad enough. I was willing to do whatever it took to be an "internet entrepreneur" like they show in the magazines.
It's too easy to give up. Flipping your bad situation into a good one is hard, but if you want to be successful then it's just what you have to do. The only alternative is to stay in your bad situation.. forever.
1) I kept trying a lot of different ideas but abandoned many of them. This particular one had lots of people interested in it and grew viral quickly. All I was trying to do was get some opinions from people about the site and then I checked the stats a few days later and it had massive traffic. At that point I knew it was worthy of my time.
2) It evolved daily. I basically just got it up and running even though it was shitty, and as it grew I kept expanding, updating, etc. Whenever I spend too much time trying to "perfect" a site, I usually abandon it before it even has a chance, so I try to just get SOMETHING up and running so I can see if at least the concept has potential, even if it looks and runs like shit.
3) Started out on shared hosting, moved to a dedicated server, then multiple dedicated servers with round-robin, then to a dozen clustered servers, then added PHP caching and hired an admin to optimize the web server and mysql.
4) I was shocked how much money I owed in taxes. The website was almost purely profit besides the servers. I didn't have many tax deductions, etc. I didn't keep receipts for a lot of things because I didn't realize how many things like TVs/computers/cell phones can be written off. Even some of my dinners could have been written off. I would have owed a lot less in taxes if I talked to an accountant before hand, but it all happend so fast.
5) It went viral. I looked at the 2-3 sites that offered something similar and figured out what could be improved. I never let my competitor's outdo me on features or anything else. I always offered EVERYTHING they had and more. Once we were huge, I did some search engine optimization and we were ranked number one on Google for a long time... that helped us grow to be within the Alexa top 500 for a short while.
6) Clickbank (but only offer products related to your niche), Zango (out of business), CPXInteractive (pop-ups), Adbrite (banners/full page ads), and Text-link-ads.
7) My site had user generated content, user moderators, etc. The users ran the site. I just enjoyed the profits while they made it for me. They only cared about the content and didn't mind that the owner of the site was getting rich from it. A few hardcore loyal users made me most of my money and I'm glad they were on my site and not a competitor's.
When I first started the site I took content from all of my competitor's sites. It basically got popular because I condensed several sites content into a one-stop-shop. It didn't matter to me morally because we were all in the gray area of legality anyways. I wanted to be the best of my niche and I was willing to do anything to get there.
Haha \/\/\/
I was dating a girl at the time who was always crazy horny and she was so hot. She could have been dating Brad Pitt or something. I still beat off to her pictures till this day. She was too hot for me.
Anyways, I spent 20k to fly us to Florida on a private jet. We had a $300 champange breakfast (didn't even know what it was until after they served us) and then I rented a Lamborghini Murcielago for the weekend and we went parasailing, jetsking, some mini two person submarine thing and abunch of other fun stuff.
Then I paid one of the hotel staff $200 to go buy sex toys, lube, etc. for later that night. He put them in the room while I was out so they would be ready. I had him put all the batteries n stuff in too. We got really high and drunk. She couldn't walk the next day. Most of her friends that heard the story wanted me to treat them to a similar weekend.. including the sex, but I didn't want to get used so I usually said no. Money does get you laid.. even with the hottest chicks.
30k gone in one weekend. Went through several bottles of Cristal, Dom Perignon, and Petron. We made a lot of friends down there and I let them beat the shit out of the Murcielago rental before I returned it. It was so much fun.
There was a three-some before the weekend ended but I was too f*cked up to remember. The only proof of it happening is that I woke up with two naked hot girls in my bed.. oh and the pictures I found when I took a look at the digital camera on the plane when we were heading back.
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