Any successful rags to riches stories here?
 

c'mon i'm sure there must be a few of you in here who were not doing to well starting out and eventually build a nice fortunate empire in this business ? :warning

...90% of GFY still lives with their parents:2 cents:

The funny thing is that most of the peons here don't realize that they even are in rags as they have never seen real wealth.

Anyways I started with $0 when I got into the Internet in 1994, and now I have somewhat more.

BTW webgurl I lost my pass for foogie cos I can't remember my su email address.

i know a few here that have riches to rag stories

wait... how about riches to rags stories?

Marc De

I have one, but it's PRIVATE

:winkwink:

Ivy

EDIT: But of course, the story aint over yet :-))

drop it. nubees want teh know. how much is momz charging for rent?


or...





rags to riches. how'd you do it?

Im a damn cinderella story in the making...just waiting on richard gere in the limo.....any day now.....

I have more like a rags to wal-mart story does that count?

If I remember correctly, quiet may not have been rags but he wasn't living the greatest.

And I think Drinking Hard was laid off from his job before he started.

And I believe Choker was a taxi driver.

How about riches to rags to riches?

at one point a year or so back, i was on this board crying about how i was just about to be thrown out of my place, and i couldnt even afford my cable bill to stay online any longer.

i stuck with it and pushed as hard as i could, it all worked out so far! Now i feel more confident than ever and i am getting close to having six figures in savings.

all debt is paid off! ALL OF IT!!

If i had to give some advice to someone in my old positions, id recommend that they never ever stop trying. even when it looks so bad that you wanna eat a few bottles of pills .. i have been there ... dont stop trying!!

never give up and eventually it all works itself out somehow.

good advice

im happy for ya

I've read a few cool stories on GFY.. it's always nice to hear more. Nothing wrong with someone that starts off with money, but someone that build everything from nothing gets a little more respect in my eyes.

I had a lawn service when I was in high school. I was in DCT (school work program lets you out of school early to work) well I had a guy I knew sign my papers and I claimed I worked for him. However in reality I was running my own lawn business.

I bought a house on my 21st birthday and started buying and selling cars shortly after. I decided to get legal and got my used car dealers license and was doing ok with that. I then had the opportunity to get into the floor cleaning business and did ok with that.

By the time I was 25 I was pretty much burnt out and started letting things go and fucked up and lost it all. Spent the last 4-5 years thinking about what I did wrong and what I'm doing next.

Needless to say it's hard to get motivated when you busted your butt for a long time to only lose what you had in less than 6 months. How's that for a success story, least I can laugh about it :1orglaugh

I think there's more of these :)
WG

Congrats on your success.
WG

no wonder i haven't see you around on my board lately [email protected] :thumbsup
Thanks

Always great to hear a good story or see some good stats. Congrats to you!

I know guys from the old days in Vancouver who gave up adult in 1999/2000 thinking it was tapped out. I hear one of them is now a social worker lol....

I used to make way more than I do now. :thumbsup

I have an unsuccessful rags to riches story, does that count?

Sure let's hear it... ;) ;)

the best stories are from going to the foodbank to ------> hiring an iron chef in your home to cook your meals everyday :Graucho

:1orglaugh

Lol there are tons of rags to dirty tshirts stories

my BIGGEST mistake was not really "giving up", but forced to leave this biz for 2 yrs:(

if i would have done what i wanted to do 2 yrs ago, i'd have a rags to riches story.:)

Well I didn't start in rags, but was pretty close....so here's the brief version of my climb through various jobs....

age 14 - summer warehouse work
age 16 - summer warehouse work and managing comic book store

This gave me basically enough money to buy lunch at school sometimes, buy comics and videogames, take girls out, etc...nothing more.

age 17 - dropped out of computer science in cegep (quebec's college system wannbe) because I realized it was shit. Started data entry job a friend got me in an ecommerce company.

Moved up to programmer after a few months...then got laid off with half the company when the dot com crash hit.

Started my first work in the realm of porn here, as a designer who got laid off with me started up a small office to run his 10 or so porn sites. Collected unemployment as well as $400/week cash from him, just managing people doing submissions and a designer. Got so hbored started to learn PHP while at work.

Blew all this money partying every single night :glugglug

age 18 - learnt enough PHP to get hired by IwantU as a junior programmer. Have touched almost every net career possible there, including at one time or another:

junior programmer, senior programmer, sales rep, makerting, systems administrator, project manager, CTO and finally Webmaster.

I've now moved to Costa Rica, have 0 debt in the world, no creditcards, cash to spare and a sweet guarenteed bonus in one more year where my contract is up that I plan to open a bar/venue with.

To top it all off, yesterday I got a 20% raise :Graucho

What's the story behind Marc De. I'm very interested. Seems like a bright guy. I read an interview he did about 2 years ago. I was surprised to learn he was in his early twenties. What he accomplished is quite a feat! Many players though are young in this biz.

Varius: hiring? lol

Actually yes....but only in-house in Costa Rica :glugglug

see man, why'd you have to hit me below the belt :/




j/k I know you didn't know that was also my story....


I'm working on it...

Wait, I've got a Upper class whitey to even further upper class whitey story, care to listen?

are you serious?

Well, I make 50k a year on my day job, and I want to pay off 13k in debt that my exwife, may she rot in hell, left me.

hey divorced guys, help a bro out and click on my sig!!!

anyway, I'd have to be seeing 40k, and I think it's a catch 22-I make to much dyas to go full bore, but I am stuck around 300 bucks a month.

anyone want to help me improve my sites?

www.gayhumiliation.com
www.masterseth.com

I'm not trying to totally diss taxi drivers, but with 2 little girls I'm sure that could make for very tight money. And yes I thought I heard that somewhere, though I could be totally wrong.

Glad everything worked out for you man. Good advice. :thumbsup

I went from a bum who had a simple job and spent all my money on gambling at the races and who had never touched a computer in my life to having made over $500,000 US clear profit in 18 months from spamming search engines.
I have never had a bet since and I still pinch myself that it is that easy.:thumbsup

Yep lost my job after 911. I was working for a company renting out apartments for business travellers. I was just doing adult humor (E&N sites) back then making my $20 a month off of Pay Per Click Amateur Page Banners (Thanks Lensman!)

Decided to say fuck it, I'm not going to let the economy or world have any more say in my career future and went into adult full time. Started making galleries and submitting them to anyone who would take them.

Figured I could make XXX amount of dollars each day if I could submit 1 gallery a day... Then I decided to submit 2 galleries a day (which was considered borderline and I would be blacklisted) and nothing happened. Then I submitted 3 galleries a day, then 4, then 5 and so on and so on....

Nowadays it's not so easy to get listed as it was before (I guess I can thank myself for that! LOL!) But anyways that is where my roots were....

I moved on to investing in other adult humor sites, gallery submission services, TGP sites, Movie sites, Real Estate, Paysites and of course Gallery Traffic Service.

I started off with honestly nothing and was looking to make HOPEFULLY an extra $500-1000 a month off adult stuff. A lot of people told me I was wasting my time and nothing would become of it. We now have 9 full time staff, 6 real estate properties and a thriving advertising company.

I was glad I pursued my dream of being a pornographer and I hope this post entices you to do the same. :)

DH

Nice post -
I started off broke - Worked like hell and now live comfortably in extreme poverty!!!!

l/k

I cant say to riches. But ive seen money get made.

I guess I?ll follow DH?s story. I wouldn?t call it Rags to Riches but it was definitely building something from nothing.

I started 7 or 8 years ago while I was studying in university and living with my parents. I had stumbled across Persian Kitty while surfing with lynx (anybody who remembers lynx knows it was no way to find porn). After a month of lynx I finally surfed with a browser and went back to Persian Kitty. I was in shock when I saw her hit counter. It was the old Digits one and the number of visitors it displayed blew me away. I couldn?t believe that many people would be going to a site. Immediately my brain kicked into high gear.

So I built my first Free site. I hosted it on my free account with the university. It was all pictures, no banners and a web counter. It went up on PK around 6pm on Friday. OH MAN! That was the beginning of my new career. I was getting hits like there was no tomorrow. A friend of mine was over and I showed him the hit counter and I?d reload and say look 100 people just visited in the time I clicked reload. It was a great night. I made no money but I knew I was onto something big. Monday morning at 8am I got a phone call from the university. Apparently I had used 99% of the bandwidth in 3 days that the university had used in 5 years. They were pissed. I was banned from all internet and computer accounts in the school.

I won?t bore you with the rest of the details. But from that day on I put my heart and soul into building up my business. I worked my ass off. I would pull all nighters with my Wife. We?d go out for coffee around 3am then finish working between 8 and 10am go out to breakfast come home sleep for a few hours and do it all over again.

I started with nothing, just a regular young guy going to university. I sacrificed a lot of friends and a lot of good partying to have what I have now and it was all worth it. Thanks to this industry I met my kick ass beautiful Wife (who is also my business partner). I?m living in the Bahamas. I sit at my desk everyday and have the ocean staring right back at me. We get to travel to amazing places. Rent exotic cars, stay in amazing hotels, have fantastic meals. We?ve got our own boat. We?ve got a business that is continually growing. Most of our best friends have been people we?ve met thanks to this business. I don?t regret a thing. It was all worth it and I honestly can not picture my life without it.

One word of advice. I remember going to a dinner back in 1998. It was the first time I ever met people from the industry. Carol and Danny Cox, Saus, Serge (who probably still remembers I didn?t say hi to him), James and Victoria. Anyhow, back then a few of the people there were discussing free sites and how anybody who hadn?t started a free site by then was too late. This is 1998. Imagine if myself or others would have listened to the advice that it was TOO LATE to start something. I heard the same thing about paysites 3 years ago when I started Twistys. I?m glad I didn?t listen then either. Remember it is NEVER TOO LATE! If you have the idea and have the determination it is never too late. Put your heart and soul into it and you?ll be successful. :thumbsup

You're the reason college fees have skyrocketed!!! :1orglaugh

Good post Shap! Viva La Canada!!!

DH

SHAP, you set an example for all the college students buddy :)

I started in 1998 (non-adult) with my own Internet Marketing agency, grew to 12 people in 18 months. That was all organic growth, people, I had no capital to speak of... I had $500 from my college days when I did a recruitment brochures for the college (a lot of fame, but not enough money).

In 2000, we merged with an IT company - biggest Outsourcing company here. I left in 2003 to start www.NicheFetish.com. My dividents from this company (it's privately held) are still times more than my profit from www.NicheFetish.com but the biz is growing and I'm happy :)

I wouldn't say I was in rags before but I certainly felt like it during my mandatory military service. So yeah ... I feel much richer :)

bump for more rags to riches stories :)

I "know of" a true rags to riches to rags story involving the IRS, cancer and death...

But won't be posting it here....

i went from rags, to a more than comfortable monthly income, then back to rags again :1orglaugh

now.. to get back to my old comfort level and go from there, actually a little tougher the second time around

rick latona was a car salesman

Thanks for that bit of advice. I needed that right about now.

LOL...great anecdote...

<BIG B as the Big Radu>


"Ive gone from Rags to Riches"


Thanks CECash!


</Big B as the Big Radu>


BIG B