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How did you make your first internet dollar?

For me, it was a guide I wrote on how to break into product management. I didn't expect anyone to pay for it (I literally let people download it for free) but still, some people did. It really blew me away and got me excited to start building.

How did you make yours? How long did it take? I'd love to hear about it!

If interested, the guide can be downloaded for free here:
https://benlkatz.gumroad.com/l/breakingintoproduct?_gl=1

on February 11, 2023
  1. 1

    hello everyone, at the moment I work as they say for my uncle ..-) I write in Python, but you won’t believe my very first money, I earned it in an online casino ..-) and even now having a good job, I sometimes allow me to play for not very large amounts but Are there gamblers here?

  2. 1

    I just launched my first online course. Had an email list of about 80 sign up for updates while I was working on it and made 3 sales from that list (at early bird price $99) and 2 organic sales (for full price at $199). Quite the rush when you make that first online sale!

    1. 1

      Nice work man, that's impressive!

  3. 1

    For me it was freelancing, I was providing SEO services and got my very first order of 90$. It felt like a great achievement back then.

    1. 2

      It's definitely a great a achievement! Cool to see how far we've come.

  4. 1

    Built some fun android apps back in 2011, mostly Soundboards. Made around 200$ from them with ads :D

    1. 1

      Not bad! That's a pretty fun one :)

  5. 1

    I sold a minecraft plugin / coded a minecraft plugin for someone who needed it for their partly commercial server. Best 100 bucks of my life

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      talk about turning your hobbies into $$$

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        Yeah it was quite liberating. But well, minecraft hype is over xD

  6. 1

    Built an inventory tracker for the business I was working for at the time. Still pay me yearly to keep using it 8 years later. Not much, $500. But still felt good to build something useful enough people would pay me for it.

    1. 1

      Thats great! Love that it has residual income too.

  7. 1

    Made Youtube backgrounds using GIMP and I was absolutely buzzing when someone paid me $5 for one. Spent my new found internet wealth on joystick and trigger attachments for my PS3 controller.

    1. 2

      Money well spent!

  8. 1

    I earn my first 5 dollar from the logo designer and after completing 5 successful project i left this work because i was doing computer science and it looks odd in the morning i coding and in the evening time i doing graphic designing.

    But soon i realized that graphic designing is a long time process as compared the development. But i learned a lot of things as a graphic designer which is helping me a lot in my daily work.

    Do the work in which your interested. salary, money, revenue does not matter all the time but your passion matters.

    1. 1

      love it. Having design sense is definitely a valuable asset as a developer.

  9. 1

    For me, it was from a free product called the Business Idea Bank which I created in Airtable and put up on gumroad. Quite a number of people just decided to pay for it on their own which was an incredibly pleasant surprise. And so I created a free and paid version of it recently (after I crossed 130 free downloads).

    1. 1

      That's awesome, Genny! It's very satisfying to make money on something you weren't expecting to:)

  10. 1

    I made a few hundred $ writing random articles on eHow way back in the day when revenue sharing on content sites was a thing.

    1. 1

      Wow, those were the days!

  11. 1

    Simply I can say NFT!

  12. 1

    I volunteered to help someone with their iOS project as a way to practice my skills. After he submitted his project (this was for a class), he sent me like 200 bucks over PayPal. I didn't even ask/expect any money from this, but he insisted! That was the first time I ever made money from writing code.

    1. 1

      that's awesome. Peoples generosity never ceases to surprise me :)

  13. 1

    Sold stuff on a platform for used thing.

  14. 1

    I previewed ads prior to them going public for a few cents over time that became a dollar XD

    1. 1

      Gotta start somewhere! Cents add up in time 💪🏻

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago

    1. 1

      Love that! Such a fun way to start.