I got started designing webpages when I was 15. My families first computer was a Commodore 64. I used that primarly to play Pac-Man. But in 1995 my family bought a 486DX2 66mhz computer for my college bound sister. That was the computer I learned HTML on. I did my first webpage on Angelfire.com and also TopTown.com. Toptown is no more. In the course of many years, I continued to develop pages. I still haven't learned any advanced programming yet. I've been dabbling in PHP a lot though. It took about 10 years of my life of goofing around, to finally get the skills to make money online. I sold my first website subscription on September 19, 2004. That was an amazing day. I remember how excited I was. I felt like I had just won the lottery. Just like all those athletes that had mental barriers, keeping them from breaking the sub 4 minute mile. Once I made that first sale and saw it was indeed possible for me to profit from the web. I began to seek out more and more opportunties to profit from the net. I can't say that the web has made me a rich man yet, but I'm earning enough money from my online business to pay the bills and not have to have a real job.
congrats, i also started at the age of about 15/16 and im still only 19 and have made some money (altho it gets chucked back into advertising )
Keep up the good work. It was only in the past 3.5 years, that I started making head way and finding my break through. It all came about pretty much randomly. Just happened to find a niche that turned out to be a cash crop. Each and every day I'm stumbling around the net, looking for something I can be the first one in. If you get there first, you tend to hold credibility over future competitors. I don't know what my next venture will be. I go with that idea 9 out of 10 business fail in the first 2 years. I figure if I try enough ideas, that at least one of them will be profitable. Back when I got started, there weren't all these forums and supportive groups as there is now. I didn't have anybody. I just did trial and error and I still do it. That's the only thing that has ever worked for me. Just keep trying until I either break it or fix it. Just a quick tip. The business I'm running now, actually was started by someone else in 1999. It actually was founded in 1997. The lady gave up running it in around 2002. I happened upon a dead site and saw that there was only a few other competitors. I saw that there was a loyal following over the years. I begin doing my own version of a site with the same name. Before long I had many of the original members back. I then purchased the original domain and site from the previous owner after a few rounds of negotiation. The reason the site didn't produce the way it does with me with her, was because I had programming skills that she didn't have. I was able to find software to install and do all the work. So everything is pretty much ran on auto pilot. She metaphorically laid the ground work and foundation. I came along and put the walls and roof on. She had spent countless hours promoting the domain. I bought it from her and instantly got a link popularity of 300 to 500 links. 30 of which were on google. So I was able save myself about 3 or 4 months of work, by buying a domain. I'm very lazy. I'd rather pay and have something done or already done so I don't have to do it. Plus it's a lot harder starting from scratch. That's why franchises are so popular, it's just simpler to take a business model that works and run with it. I heard a motivational speaker tell a story once about a father and son who went fishing. The went out and spent all day fishing and didn't catch anything. The father and son both were very disappointed. That evening the father went to the bait and tackle. He asked the clerk, who is the best fisherman around these parts. The clerk told him a name and he got in touch with him. He offered the fisherman $300 dollars to take him fishing in this lake. Well they went out and that whole day the fished and caught hundreds, filled the boat. The son was young and thought $300 dollars was crazy amount. But his father new, that for $300 bucks, they were buying 25 years of that fisherman's experience. After I heard that story, I began to look at things differently. There's ton of money out on the net to be made. I look at the net as a big lake. People are the fish. I just have to find the right bait to catch them and then reel them in. My new hobby now is fishing. But I'm not fishing for fish, I'm fishing for money. Everybody is going to buy something, it's having that something that someone wants to buy. Business in it's simpliest form is simply finding enough people to buy our information, service, or product to make it worth while.