From Rags To Riches - The Online Story Thread

[OK]

This thread is partly like a story telling thread about how you started making money online and partly how others can start doing the same (making it a tutorial).


I started webmastering around 13. Back then, I knew absolutely nothing. Had no cash, no skills, no ideas, nothing. I only realized that I can make websites because of a friend of mine, who was making some small cash (which we thought was huge back then). After seeing his site, I realized I can do the same.

So the process started. I knew I needed some money to work with, so I found this site http://www.emailmoneyback.com. Pretty much, you do a lot of clicking and signing up for spyware to get some money into your paypal. Everyday, I would spend time doing everything I could on that site, and after 2 weeks, I had enough money to afford a domain. So I purchased Script4All.info for $2.00 at GoDaddy (back in the day when they were $2).

My idea was to resell other peoples scripts (with permission of course) to the general public. So I would contact lots of companies selling scripts and asking for commission on my sales, and many agreed. I signed up for HotScripts.com and got a lot of traffic to their toplist and earned lots of points (see hotscripts.com for how the system worked) and made it to the top of all listing. Now I was getting about 3 sales a day and soon had enough money and knowledge to venture out on my own.

Thats how I started. How about you guys?

 

[siradio]

I built my first websites about 8/9 years ago. The first one was just completely random, with stuff me and my friends found funny (and probably nobody else would have), the second was a scathing attack on an ex-girlfriend (cmon, I was only 15 :P ) and the third was the one which set me on my way to taking it seriously.

It was called "Beersday" - a website dedicated to a yearly event me and my friends used to partake in, which was (suprisingly) a 24-hour drinking marathon.

Since a decent amount of people were checking it out, I ended up teaching myself how to use frontpage and photoshop to make it look semi-professional, and after a while, got hooked on those programs and started branching out into other things.

After that site, I toyed around with a few others, such as a forum signatures website, gaming news website etc, all very small, none of which lasted very long.

After that I pretty much stopped bothering with website creation and webmastering in general, and concentrated on teaching myself as much about photoshop and other gfx programs as I could.

My first real money-making venture was about 4 years ago, which was a stint into selling completely random things on ebay. It started initially with wholesale DVD dealings - buying batches of really crappy, really cheap DVDs and putting together bundles with a couple of decent ones thrown in.

That did make me a nice bit of money at the time, but the effort put into it was a lot more than what I got into it, so I started selling e-books, mostly revolving around how to make money from e-bay. This actually went very well, and I shifted thousands of units at $5 each. Eventually though, the people who bought these ebooks started reselling them, and it got to the point where trying to sell for anything over $1 was pointless, so that was the end of that.

Following from there, I got involved with Split Infinity Radio, which is my current project. Anyone who is involved in online radio will tell you it is a huge money-sink, and requires a lot of funds, time and effort. We do make a small bit of revenue through affiliate programs, however the real benefit of being involved with the station is the connections to the gaming world it has given me.

Its through these connections that I got my latest "windfall". When the press release from Nintendo went out announcing the name of their upcoming console (the Wii), I got it the same time the big gaming websites such as Gamespot and IGN got it, so while they were busy publishing the news, I was over at GoDaddy registering names like TalkWii.com, BuyWii.com, MyWii.com etc.

Almost all of these domains have now been sold, netting me close to $9000

So, thank you Nintendo

 

[Snurf]

At school one day a kid was talking about his arcade site that he had and claimed he made hundreds a day on it ( i don't think he made a dime). That really caught my attention so I found GoDaddy on google and I thought it was amazing that ordinary people could register domains. I had always thought you needed to be in the government or be really rich to register a domain . So I decided to buy my very first domain! I made an arcade site from the ground up and it was my first experience.

It has become an exciting hobby for me. This summer I sold the website and it was my biggest sale

 

[bbalegere]

I hope this link is not scam
http://www.emailmoneyback.com/

BTW U R NOT ALLOWED TO USE REFERRAL LINKS.
EVEN THOUGH THE LINK APPEREARS AS http://www.emailmoneyback.com/ IT IS ACTUALLY DIRECTED TO U R REFERRAL LINK.PLEASE EDIT THE LINK.

 

[ForexPros]

I have started my first site SoccerFriend.com just becouse of my love to soccer. I also got hooked up with domains and now I own around 200 of them maybe more. I have not made any huge profits from them, but at the same I have not tried hard as well.

I am running SoccerFriend.com just becouse soccer is my hobby. There are not any big profits from it only expenses.

I am at the point when I want to start my new online venture ( I would not tell you about it please understand ) but it requires me around 10k just to start up. And so far I am in process of collecting those money.

Since I have enough I will jump into it

 

[SkyMan]

That's actually kind of funny siradio.

I own BuyWii.com now, and i'm pretty sure you didn't sell it to me. lol. So it's made its way around!

 

[lifetalk]

well.. since it's been only a few months since i got into the bizness of creating websites... i am still on my way.. like my idea is to cr8 websties, promote them, grow them, and then sell them.. cze normally, popular websites, along with domains, sell for MUCH more than domains alone, or websites alone!

 

[lee101]

I first started creating websites about 4 years ago, just for fun, they were really rubbish, and created using just MS Paint and Notepad, so the graphics weren't exactly great, The around a year ago I found out about PHP, and started learning that, originally just for a load of personnal projects, then not long ago I learnt how to use mysql, and found how easy stuff was to do, So since then I have made approximately 3 custom scripts, and am in the Process of developming a gaming script. That has made me just under $100 so far, as I was pretty new, and didn't want to charge high prices, I just wanted to get used to everything.

Also I have found out advertising (clicksor), and the fact that at most schools block gaming websites, but it is something that most people want. So about a week ago I released a gaming website, my aim is to "make it unblockable" as i have not used any keywords in the site, and so far that has been proving to earn a little, with veyr few people knowing of it

 

[DomainDomain]

Hey
I started in this game with a 99p ebook from ebay, about buying and selling domain names. I found NamePros.com, and read for about 3 wks solid. I was hooked! I regged and bought a few very poor domains and I haven’t even tried to sell them (they probably wouldn’t sell anyway…)
Then I read some posts about web development, and this really captured my imagination. I had a load of half decent domains, about things I was interested in, so in the last 3 months I have been building up very small, very basic sites. No revenue as yet, but the ideas for sites are coming quicker than my design skills can keep up with.
My current target is to begin making money off the 5 sites I have made, and getting those sites completed.
I have recently found affiliate programmes, and that has given me even more ideas for different sites.
So, that’s the story so far – watch this space….
Cheers
Jay

 

[PolurNET]

Cool thread & stories, everyone!

I started getting interested in programming more than 5 years ago, so made my first "email checker" program in Visual Basic. Since I wanted to sell it, I made a website for it, buying hosting from a local company who also registered the domain. I used the domain primarily for personal email as well, while I tried to promote the program (it's still here :P ciantechnologies.com/divisions/ESS/mail-to-go.htm)

In the meantime, I was also making an educational site, with all my essays, projects, etc. and putting them online on my Yahoo Geocities page. Subsequently I got interested in graphics/web design, html, perl and PHP programming, which made me improve the educational website, and eventually buy a separate domain for it, hosted with a friend. That project still continues today and now known as inforesourcenet/inforesource.in

Eventually, I ventured to make my own hosting site, using a server that I rented every month. From there, I put a lot of energy in developing the site, and made quite a few sales which was encouraging. Now, after several years, it's a relatively popular hosting company with several thousands of websites on multiple servers. Looking back, in spite of the hard work, not only was it interesting, but also an enriching experience that is now a satisfying accomplishment! :wave:

 

[YesBrilliant]

Cool thread & stories, everyone!

I totally agree!

May be a little bit old but still a great place to read, and why not share, our real stories.

We can remember the 'good old' times as well...

 

[zachary0611]

id like to see members with some of the bigger sites post in here

 

[holdem8]

Great stuff!

Hi all!

I just found this post and I think its inspiring. I started online marketing almost 10 years ago. My first site was CoolVCD.com which was selling original video CDs on the net. Eventually it was sold off when the MPAA in US thought that the VCDs were competing too much with DVDs and shut down my site for an offence they called "parallel imports". That was bad when I was selling like $80,000 to $100,000 worth of goods a month at that time!

Anyway, after my site was shut down, I went back to some offline business and I was in the "wilderness" for a few years. Two years back I came back very strongly into the online world, devouring everything I could on making money online(ebooks). I think I have spent thousands of dollars on those stuffs and I must admit it did help. My biggest mistake was NOT building a list and NOT being focused. To all newbies...remember NOT to repeat this mistake!

I was also involved in domaining in the past 2 years, starting out with really crap names. I guess everyone will have to go through these learning curve. So I have decided to pour ALL my knowledge that I have into an ebook for beginner domainers for FREE. As you know, the reason for it being free is because I want to build a mailing list (I have learnt my lesson)

Recently, I came across the domain tradeup idea from One Ugly Domain and I think it is pure genius.... the idea was mooted from the "red paper clip" idea.
Now, I can see a huge success for the owner of One Ugly Domain but how about the rest of us?? Everyone, including myself would want to have a similiar program where I can "trade-up" my domains with fellow domain swappers, rite?

So, now, I am building "hopefully" the world's 1st domain swapping marketplace for everyone. Adn the good news is that its FREE! Hopefully it should launch in April 2007 (I've been working on it for months now) and thats it.... my first big project after so many years in the offline "wilderness"!
BTW... the site is http://www.SwapNames.com but its still under construction.

Good luck everyone!

Al.

 

[TeviH]

fun thread!
--

My story: Back when I was 12, I went on an overnight class trip. One of the chaperons, who happened to be a family friend and the cook at my school, sent out emails to a link where we could view pictures from the trip online. This was way back, before everyone had internet - we had a 14.4 modem! - and before it was cool to be a nerd! I was shocked. I had never thought about where websites come from, or that it was even possible for me to make one. I asked The Cook how he got the pictures online, and he directed me to Joe Barta's HTML tutorial, "webtutor".

I started learning how to write HTML in notepad, and made a website for a friend of mine. It was basically a "MySpace" page before there was myspace. I was also getting into 3D at that time. Eventually, I was getting into 2D graphics, as well, and in a couple years, I started Aardvark Web Design. I was in 10th grade, and have been doing web and graphic design ever since.

 

[Red_Spider]

this is really an amazing thread.. i will post my stuff soon...

 

[BuzzGuyz]

I have always been fascinated with the internet.

I think I am still just getting started in the mission of RETIRING MY WIFE!

I work full time now but will be using my knowledge to create the income enough to keep her home to raise a family.

I think I started in highschool creating a basic site using HTML for my highschool football team. I put it off for a while and then registered a few domains that I was going to build but always seemed to let them drop off.

Now I have about 150 domains alot in the .TV extension ready for sale and development. I really dont know much in terms of programming and coding but I have the ideas, work ethic and drive to learn and that's what Im doing now.

I am working on a project with a partner (www.weddings411.ca coming soon)

Does anyone know legit people earning $1million dollars a year on the internet or who have become millionaires using the internet as their primary stream of income? ? ?

I am going to start a thread to get input. I own www.millionaireminds.TV and would like to start developing content for the site in the near future so having a list would be great. . ..

Great THread!

 

[angisson]

I started mabe 3 or 4 years ago. My dad was always into the computer and internet world, he set me up with a subdomain after about 6 months of playing (with HTML and etc) with it he bought me my first domain (it was 4TeensOnly.com) from there I got into webmaster forums where I learned how to make and keep up my teen forum, after that I met a person by the name of JR he was having a promo on his site so I joined (only posted 900 ish posts in 6 days) I won the promo, and got 10 free domains.. and thats how I got into domains, after I got the 10 domains I got a link to NamePros from a friend and joined to try and sell my domain. after that the rest is just history, I am making decent money doing what I do now (build turnkey websites and other sites)


if spelling sucks, its 1 AM here.. leave me alone :P

 

[thenthdoctor]

Bump!

Hi, I'm Nathan Hawks, I'm a newbie to domaining and NamePros, and I'd like to bump this thread.

I haven't got rich yet on the Internet, but I have gotten free with it. I have been working as a contractor for most of the past six years, rarely reporting to work at any specific time, finding my own tasks and keeping my own company. The wealth I've had has been in the form of higher-than-salary rates and much more time on my hands.

Now I'm writing for the industry and finding it's matured a lot from the day when it was purely typo-driven traffic terrorism. A lot of parking I see is really just really well-targeted searches and brand creativity. People in the field are trying to find standardization and predictability in the market values. Not bad.

So getting into writing about it as I am, I am beginning to bootstrap a little. The money-wealth part of my free-time-heavy diet is hopefully to come.

I'm starting into domaining from a couple different angles, as a writer and as a general Internet-tech guy. I bought a meager few domains, like I said bootstrapping, and parked all but one of them. On that last one, I am using Joomla to experiment with the right mix of software and targeted ads 'n articles for a "parking 2.0" site. I did the best I could on keywords and well-timedness... I parked the refinancing keywords and am doing a site giving pointers to the beginning and intermediate skills of doing what I'm doing, I call it PIY (park it yourself). Wish me luck. I'll share the URL after a few more developments

I think I can do domaining because I know catchy when I see it, and I can identify a trend. I guess when I consider my income sources over the past years, I'd say I've made some forty or sixty thousand in my full-time-spare-time setting up various kinds of websites in different ways, either with scripting, or ready-made apps, or written content, or advice.

Anyway, glad to meet y'all, and, cool thread :imho:

 

[$1.00]

Its through these connections that I got my latest "windfall". When the press release from Nintendo went out announcing the name of their upcoming console (the Wii), I got it the same time the big gaming websites such as Gamespot and IGN got it, so while they were busy publishing the news, I was over at GoDaddy registering names like TalkWii.com, BuyWii.com, MyWii.com etc.

Almost all of these domains have now been sold, netting me close to $9000

So, thank you Nintendo

Dude your Evil! Hahaha !! :kickass:
Opportunities like that you have jump on them quick.