Member-only story
How Making Money Online Nearly Killed My Creativity
Creativity is vital now more than ever and I nearly killed mine.
Fairly young and just out of college, I started making money online quickly. Now, three-year-olds are receiving five-figure monthly Google deposits in their parent's accounts. What a world!
On the Fast Track to Fast Money
I made my first check online with something called “All Advantage.” All Advantage was sort of the Adsense of its day. It was a simple bar you could download and it flashed ads on the bottom of your screen as long as you were online.
All Advantage graciously paid you for those flashing ads. If you signed up and downloaded the bar, you would automatically get a $25 check sent to you in the mail.
But if you “made a referral that resulted in a download,” you made money as well (it was so long ago, I can’t remember the actual amount you could make per referral). I downloaded the bar and what do you know, I received a $25 check via snail mail the following month.
The moment I saw that $25, I thought, “Yeah, I can do this on the side (yes, before side-hustling became a trend), make some money fast, and write.”
As it happened, this was 2000 when Yahoo had Yahoo groups. I joined a few make-money-online groups…
