my first ever internet money

— everything started with an experiement.

I was 15 back then, all in on video games.
downloading, cracking, and playing pirated video games gave me the kick.
pokémon red, blue, firered, ruby, emerald — i've played them all.
didn’t have a game boy, though owning one was a dream, but had an emulator on my pc.
wanted to learn reverse engineering just so that i could crack any game i want.
x64dbg and decompiler was my play tool, cracking winrar was my happiest moment.
nowadays, kids that age are building million-dollar startups from their bedrooms.

somewhere around that time, i discovered link-shortening websites.
and started converting traffic from google blogs and youtube
(more from youtube, as i remember it) to my links.
used to post random videos, from game-crack-help whatnot on yt
these links showed ads while visitors accessed them.
i was used proxies to bypass the system (high-quality proxies worked,
but my account usually got banned).
it’s crazy to think that a kid was playing with 1’s, 2’s,
and a couple of dots to find ways to bypass the system.
i used to browse hacker forums for proxy tools to game the system.
back then doing what im doing was (infinite money glitch.)

but i wasn’t able to withdraw the money since i didn’t have a bank account.
later, that platform had ~$20 to withdraw
(that was my first-ever crazy internet money). WOW
the worst part is i can’t recall the link-shortening provider name
link-something something, it had a dark green logo as i recall it
it’s been almost 10 years since then.
i remember them sending me a random email on a random day,
asking me to withdraw as i had a balance in it.

later, when i came of age, the platform was no more.
~$20 my first internet money, went the drain
around that time, i also discovered e-commerce.
there was a platform named wooplr (luckily, i remember the name this time),
where you could create your own affiliate store for free.
just had to add products from other stores with your margin.
i didn’t know much about marketing back then,
so i used to text people in random stranger chats to promote my products in disguise.
that wasn’t much of a success, and the platform eventually shut down.

when i got into high school, i got myself a minor pan card
(since i wasn’t 18 yet) and a bank account from the bank near my school.
i got started with amazon affiliate marketing.
as the tech head in my circle, i referred all my friends to gaming laptops.
earnings in those days were good — ~$50 per affiliate.
around that time, i also discovered crypto.
i tried mining on my potato pc (sadly, i didn’t mine doge).
also did many small gigs in between, including falling for scams like multi-level marketing.

around that time, i got interested in cybersecurity
(yes, someone who’s always chasing new interests — that’s the generalist in me).
i joined a hacker academy to learn more.
my parents thought hacking was bad for kids, but i insisted that's what i want to become.
i did lots of mischief with hacking. more the script kiddie.
self learned python, building instagram bots, and bruting the student login was all part time fun

fast forward fast forward, i am of of age 18,
joined a college, i rediscovered crypto, won my first-ever hackathon.
discovering hackathons was a lightbulb moment for me.
kinda went on a hackathon streak, winning almost 15+ hackathons till date.
the covid hit, gave lots of time to learn from home.
earned through airdrops, grants, trading, and web3.
it was like "internet black box money" — meme coins and yield on crypto.
might have earned couple of thousand dollars $ there.

fast forward again, i skipped campus placement offers and started (cofount.com) with friends.
there’s still a lot more to earn and grow.