Ask HN: How did you make your first $10,000?

Doing what?

I haven't been following the scene for a few years now, so can't tell if DLL injection and similar methods are detected by casino clients more easily and thus being riskier todo.

I know what you mean. We did DLL injection, network protocol analysis, reverse engineering, etc. and almost always went with screen scraping in the end due to its easiness and universality.

If you are lucky tho, the client might produce logs real-time and you can get events simply by polling the log file.

I grew up in a small farming community in Indiana and from 8th grade on I worked summers and after school on a Dairy farm.

I think I got paid $9/hour or something like that, but I worked so many hours that I had a decent amount saved up after a while.

The work was really hard, and that's what made me decide to go to college for Computer Science. I respect people who can do that work their whole life, but it is rough.

Haven't made $10,000 yet, but my first 1,000 was by selling a calendar I designed and magnet pens I make by hand and sell here: http://dayonepp.com/. Way back in 2008 I came up with a square-less calendar design that combined the tradition layout with a todo list: http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2010/12/invention-calendar-layo.... Things got delayed, years later I tried a kickstarter for the calendar but it failed miserably. My goal was too high and my video sucked.

Over a year later I just said "screw it" I'm going for it. And threw in $2,000 to purchase my first 250 calendars & boxes & shipping supplies. I didn't know how I was going to sell them, it was already December so I was late, but somehow they sold. In a little over a month I sold a whole bunch on FAB.com and my own Wordpress e-commerce site I threw together. I sold out in 2 months and ordered another $6,000 worth of inventory mostly for next year. Upgraded their design so they were more premium and could be rolled up. Taking the packaging weight down to just 1 pound instead of 2.3 pounds. With the new design my packaging uses only 6 ounces of cardboard instead of 1.2 pounds like before. And redesigned my site.

The magnet pens I make by painstakingly by hand by boiling each and every cap in hot water so the plastic softens just enough to quickly insert a magnet into before the plastic cools. I searched all over the internet and Alibaba for magnet pens and just couldn't find anything economical or high quality enough. All the magnet pens out there were just weak or impractical. Plus with mine you can recycle the magnetic cap on other pens. I've been selling a bunch on ebay since last year. It took almost a year to become cash flow positive with the magnet pens and about 2 months to become cash flow positive with the calendars. I'm really bad at sales btw, it's my first time. But it's been totally worth it. The learning experience alone is worth more than collage classes.

Here's my store I opened up with my products: http://dayonepp.com/ I've got more original products on the way as well.

Just for you guys, use promotion code "hn" to get $1 off your order.

Tell that to Skadden Arps.