A customer read about what we were doing in the newspaper after the governor threatened to shut us down, and then wrote us a very large check without even asking the price.
It was never that easy again.
Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
41–50 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#42Developing an iOS app for someone, just over £1k when it's all finished. Prior to that, bits and pieces here and there, I made a reasonable bit of money licensing a photo to a UK newspaper after they'd used it without consent.
£10k would be a big chunk, don't think I'll hit it any time in the next 18 months. Never say never though.
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#43I shoplifted copies of Adobe software from a bookstore and sold them on Ebay. Eventually I felt bad about this and turned myself into the bookstore owner and paid them back. This was high school. Does that count as entrepreneurial or just plain stupid? I'll leaning toward the latter.
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#44My first 10k were made in a year or so as junior PHP developer (Italy - 2006)
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#45While at university I managed to get a contract to temporarily install covert CCTV recording equipment to catch staff stealing from a chain of UK retailers.
I wasn't making much money until I discovered I could park outside a local swimming baths, sleep in the car, and then wake up for a swim and a shower in the morning. Sadly as soon as I locked the car, the alarm was set. If I turned over during the night, the car alarm would go off.
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#46Regular full-time job as a service desk employee. Not the best achievement associated with it, that's why I'm pursuing a research-oriented education in university now. I was young though, I hit the mark 1 year ago (I was 21)…
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#47A rather long internship with a certain prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. It was actually rather nice: I learned a lot, I was being paid to do something I consider fun, and having money is nice when you are in college.
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#48A content farm. A large scale database of information on businesses in the US / Canada. It did well, took a few weeks to build up (from various data sources). This was the early days of Google Ad Sense, and long before they concerned themselves much with content farms.
I used it to fund the development of larger, more ambitious projects (kept me from starving, paid my bills, and paid for multiple servers).
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#49Playing poker in college.
Re: Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?
#50with a blog that covered iOS jailbreaking