I am a veteran marketer and entrepreneur. I am 33. I dropped out of the University of Michigan because at the time I was making more money selling marketing leads than most people make in 5 years as an engineer. I've always had a fascination with the internet, human psychology, and finance.
I am a firm believer in personal development and the idea of ?never stop learning?. Ironic for a guy who dropped out of college, I know. I guess ?street-smarts? interest me more than the key dates in the Trojan War.
I could write a book about my life, because it?s had that many ups and downs. One thing that has always held true is if you ever call yourself a ?victim?, you will go no-where. I?ve always believed that and so I never have. My worst business decision put me in bankruptcy at twenty-five. My worst investment decision, an options trade, cost me $430K, in one day, before the stock market had even opened. (That was 3 years ago.) It was around 98% of networth. Was it stupid? Well in hindsight everything that doesn?t work is stupid. I didn?t sleep well for weeks but after a brief period I said to myself you will make it back. That is still a work in progress but progress I am committed to make. They say every millionaire goes broke at least once. I am on my third run at it and excited for the future.
Now on to my bet. I have a friend, Steve, who is one of the people you don?t talk business with. The reason I say that is he has never really taken a chance and he is always the first person to tell you why something won?t work. Before you ask why I don?t kick him out my life? (Most successful people surround themselves with people who have what they want.) Hence forums like GFY He has been a life-long friend. He is a good person just not an outside thinker. Though this bet may change his way of thinking.
So here comes the scoop. Steve in part of our last conversation over beers said: ?I can?t start a business, you need a lot of money for that.? I immediately countered with you don?t need money as much as you need creativity and some work ethic. He countered with the typical naysayer response. So I said, ?I can start a brand new business tomorrow with the cash I have in my pocket and make it profitable inside of 30 days.? He called BS and so we wagered on it. I said ?I am going to love winning your money. ALMOST as much as I love winning this challenge.? So after we parted ways we agreed via text that I had to tell him how I invested ?my start-up capital?.
The first thing I could think was to broker a domain name. The problem is that is effectively buying and selling an asset so that doesn?t really qualify in the spirit of the bet. So I kept thinking and came up with this. I don?t want to spend a lot of time building a site and what is the most prolific consumption market online? Porn! Sure Sex ALWAYS sells. So here it is first I went to
eBates , this is an affiliate link and fair game in my quest to win our wager. You get $10 just for signing up, which is free, but my story is not over. Next, I went to GoDaddy and bought the domain
Jungle Titties (with ebates activated and got 7% of my purchase price back.) ($0.58) to be exact. That put me at -$7.99. Had a made a new account I could have purchased that domain for $1.85. They run promos for $1.99 .com?s on new accounts and the cash back would have given me $0.14 more cents.
Now that I owned a hilarious domain I just needed a way to make it a website. I could have used WordPress and
TubeAce. The problem is it wasn?t clear if using a script, I already purchased, also ruined the spirit of the bet. Instead, I decided to go the down, dirty, and easy method of just using
PimpRoll. They have a builder called Hosted Tube that literally takes 5-minutes to configure. So less than 24 hours in and I am ?in business?. Hosted Tube generates the domain owner money from ads and affiliate sales. The content builds consistently, on its own, so there is a bit of a viral roll out effect on traffic. Not enough to retire in 30 days but enough to pay for a domain name renewal.
The last piece of the puzzle is to make it generate $8.00 in revenue in the next 29 days. That is where stories like this come in. By telling my story hopefully, I?ve inspired you. Hopefully, I?ve also warned about the dangers of trading options! Lastly, I sincerely hope that I made you guys laugh. I mean if nothing else the name ?Jungle Titties?.
I am not worried about it costing me $1,000 because fear is a man-made emotion, it can be eliminated from your mind with the snap of your fingers. Nothing worth doing comes without risk. Take risks and learn from the ebb and flow of said risks.
I'm happy to share this story because I think it's hilarious and I am a huge fan of the posts here. I will let everyone know when I cross the finish line and what else I did to make it happen. The longest time investment, so far, was this post. Which took about 30 minutes to write.