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This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

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Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#71

Post by kika »

frontier wrote: post #69
NickRenold wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't selling products on amazon, just linking to products that were already for sale and getting paid by Amazon for the traffic. See "product links" on this page: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/land...

Yes.. this is an Amazon affiliate program, you will require a US credit card, US bank account and US postal address to join this program. ie. for when they pay you your commissions it needs to be reported. If you are not from the US, these things are not easy to obtain. And last I checked they wouldn't even allow me to buy Amazon PPC advertising without these things either!

Usually debit card goes everywhere where credit one is needed. Debit card, US bank acct and a US postal address are easily obtainable for approximately $800-1500 one time payment (couch class ticket to US and tourist visa fee). I walked into the bank (R.I.P Washington Mutual) on Castro st. in MV, CA and left it half an hour later with the bank account. The debit card followed in the mail a week later. I had a address of my friend, but I could have used a PO box. Now you can buy US postal address online and have all spa^H^H^H mail forwarded to your email address scanned.

I then repeated this process in 2008 to incorporate, opened the business account and raised money (and put them on the account).

Now I'm living in the US, on a work visa, having no degree.

Guys, US is a fantastic country for anyone who actually _wants_ something. Put some creativity here and there and it works flawlessly. I laugh when I talk to US citizens (or read them online) who go on endless whining on how police state this country has become, how much burden you have to put up with to open the business, how the school system is in the toilet, etc, etc. They just don't know what they're talking about. Any US system could be ridiculed and laughed upon, and sometimes it deserves it. But it's fucking efficient.

Go open the debit card, bank account, business, whatever in, lets say France (I love this country, I've been there like 30 times and it's never enough). If you succeed you can come back to the US and apply for National Interest Waiver for being a person with extraordinary abilities in science AND arts AND business. Haha.

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#73

Post by jc123 »

davidjohnstone wrote: post #10

Would you consider staying in Australia? I suppose the startup scene here is nothing like it is in Silicon Valley/New York/etc., but it's not non-existent either.

I grew up in Australia. I describe it as Peace; Usa as Progress. Fits different characters. (silicon valley is unsurpassed entrepreneurial energy)

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#74

Post by TimJRobinson »

frontier wrote: post #63

I want to know how he was able to so easily become an affiliate on Amazon...? (As a fellow Australian) I tried a few years ago and Amazon wouldn't even allow me to purchase advertising (let alone join the affiliate program or sell) without having US tax numbers, bank accounts, etc.. I have an Australian pty ltd company and had to go through a third parties to get my products listed on there.

I'm an Australian and joined it in 2008 and had no problem joining (didn't even have a company at the time just registered in my own name). Maybe they changed their rules in the past few years.

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#75

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

dools wrote: post #53

My grandfather taught me HTML Whoa O_o

He's lucky, I learnt it from a brief section in the 2003 edition of A Rough Guide to the Internet.

And then spent years thinking CSS was a proprietary, evil, non-standard Microsoft technology, for some reason.

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#76

Post by lawnchair_larry »

papercruncher wrote: post #6
lachyg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to apply for the O-1, but I'm not sure I'm ready yet. No other visas are suitable.

No idea what parent poster said (comment deleted), but if you want to work in the US, you can still try for an H1B visa. Your work experience and achievements can be used to demonstrate specialization in the field and serve as the equivalent of a college Bachelors degree. The quota was exhausted for this year, but assuming you are Australian you can shoot for an E3.

The substitute ratio for work experience to college years for H1-B is 3:1. It requires a 4 year degree, so you need 12 years to make the case for this.

But, the reason we are reading about this is likely so he can use it on an O1 application. He's seeded a few of these same stories.

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#77

Post by tluyben2 »

DontBeTaken wrote: post #8

As a 17 year old, this makes me feel under accomplished. While I do have skills in regards to computery things, I'm hitting a block when it comes to developing backends to sites. I know HTML and CSS decently but programming languages that I'd need to learn just seem to bounce off. On the plus side, I'm good at other things too, like photography / producing electronic music (no Madeon though. He makes me feel under ac…

Go to flippa.com and check out what kind of sites are working; he probably sold his sites mentioned in the article there. In the world of the not venture capital sites, Flippa is a very good way to make your first $100k+. I know plenty of 17-20 year olds who made well over $100k there in a relatively short timespan. If you check there you'll see that backends don't mean so much :) In fact, by some kind of evil universe rule; the sites for sale which mention 'advanced backend' sell for the smallest amounts or not at all. Most sites are just some of Wordpress with a bunch of (commercial) plugins and some bad hacking.

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#79

Post by 108 »

javajosh wrote: post #25
sudonim wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 30. If I can give you advice to live by: don't measure yourself by others' accomplishments. If you focus on what other people have done, you'll end up chasing your tail trying to compete with an idealized notion of 20 different people. Blaze your own trail. Find the things you do well and double down on them. You'll get to where you want to be. It may not be by 18, so don't be impatient. Just keep doing the thing…

I'm 37. And if I can give some life advice, it would be to always start from the end. If you're building sites, start with the host. Make sure you understand how to deploy your thing. Then work backwards, and setup your build-test-debug loop with deployment as the final goal. Once you get something working, you can incrementally improve your process - but you need to start with some way to get your stuff online. Note…

You are so right about learning to deploy your app alone. Learning to deploy using the Free Amazon on AWS server is a must.

Re: This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley

#80

Post by frontier »

kika wrote: post #71
frontier wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes.. this is an Amazon affiliate program, you will require a US credit card, US bank account and US postal address to join this program. ie. for when they pay you your commissions it needs to be reported. If you are not from the US, these things are not easy to obtain. And last I checked they wouldn't even allow me to buy Amazon PPC advertising without these things either!

Usually debit card goes everywhere where credit one is needed. Debit card, US bank acct and a US postal address are easily obtainable for approximately $800-1500 one time payment (couch class ticket to US and tourist visa fee). I walked into the bank (R.I.P Washington Mutual) on Castro st. in MV, CA and left it half an hour later with the bank account. The debit card followed in the mail a week later. I had a address…

Interesting.. 26 hrs flying time just to open a bank account is a little extreme.. but next time I am there on vacation I'll definitely be calling into a bank and giving this a go!
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