Your First Website? Do You Remember? Did You Make Money With IT?

30 replies
Hey warriors,

I replied to a post on Lee Mc Intyre's blog, and his reply gave me an idea.

Here is his reply: "@ Franck - ha I bet my first site was uglier than yours! Maybe we should have a contest sometime?!"

So here is my first site:

Show me yours, let's see if it's more ugly than this one!?

http://web.archive.org/web/200604100...nglandpro.com/

It's pretty UGLY, but I quickly made a whooping $250 commission and many others after it.

Show us your first attempt at making money online and tell us how much you've made.

Franck
#make #money #remember #website
  • Profile picture of the author doylesoft
    Oh man!

    I am really embarrassed to have such a 1994 looking site as recently as 2004. I should be ashamed. I sold a "complete package" of Knowledge Base software and an ebook on making money with your PC for $49.95.

    (The problem is, I didn't know if the sale came from interest in Knowledge Base software, or the ebook. So I eventually stripped out the "complete package" idea so I could better track sales.)

    I didn't have a domain name and I used a hotmail email address. Believe it or not, I had one sale in 2004 and two in 2005. 2009 will be the year to clean up my act and hopefully get sales many times a week.

    Doyle Publishing
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    Brandon Doyle
    http://doylesoft.com Simple, effective, and affordable software. Knowledge Base software.

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  • Profile picture of the author doylesoft
    If you want to go WAY BACK, I offered a 10 page Cable Descrambler Report in 1997 for $5.95. I sent in snail mail. My one page site simply asked for check, cash, or money order. Credit card processors were probably so new, that I couldn't find one and I couldn't afford a merchant account. I had about a dozen sales from that. One guy sent $6.00 cash and one sent a money order that he got from a 7-Eleven. That impressed me.
    Signature

    Brandon Doyle
    http://doylesoft.com Simple, effective, and affordable software. Knowledge Base software.

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  • Profile picture of the author PeterDudek
    Here's my first website. (It was VERY ugly!)
    HeadLiceKiller.com

    But I ended up making around $25,000 per month with it until the company went bust while I simultaneously got Google bitch-slapped into oblivion.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      My very first site was ugly as sin, had a stop sign at the top of the page
      and made me 200 sales a month for a year.

      Must have been the sales copy.
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  • Profile picture of the author tommygadget
    My first website was a hobby website. For a couple of years, it had adsense on it and was making $0.25/month. One day, it started making $10, then $20 and now $40/month. I was amazed and looked at the backlinks. Turns out some people with high PR blogs liked it and posted links back. The page is still on G, page one.

    TomG.
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  • Profile picture of the author cmac2250
    my first website was terrible. And unlike you guys i have made zero money from it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Franck Silvestre
    Keep 'em coming, it's awesome to see that many people made a lot of money with their very first website.

    For me, I had a coach... so it was a little bit easy, I just replicated the system he gave me.

    For others, why do you think it didn't work?

    Did you take the time to think about it?

    Franck
    Signature
    Former Body Guard, Now REAL Traffic & List Building Coach
    >> HOT WSO: Six Figure Solo Sellers <<

    Winson Yeung said: "...Definitively A++ recommended WSO"
    Kevin Riley said: "Franck, glad to see you bringing out MORE and MORE GREAT stuff"
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    • Profile picture of the author Golelen
      I think most folks first attempts look horrid. Mine certainly did. I was so clueless that I wiped it and recreated it three times before throwing in the towel on the idea. It made me $.79 in AdSense.
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  • Profile picture of the author Teresa Coppes
    My first was really bad but I did make $1 off of it. Only because I made my mom test out the buy it now button!! lol
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    • Profile picture of the author Franck Silvestre
      Awesome.

      Make sure that you split test though.

      Franck

      Originally Posted by Katie Byrd View Post

      My first site was really ugly but made money. I fixed it up about 2 years ago and the income went down. Put it back to it's ugly original design and it started making money again!

      I've decided to leave well enough alone. :-)
      Signature
      Former Body Guard, Now REAL Traffic & List Building Coach
      >> HOT WSO: Six Figure Solo Sellers <<

      Winson Yeung said: "...Definitively A++ recommended WSO"
      Kevin Riley said: "Franck, glad to see you bringing out MORE and MORE GREAT stuff"
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[387837].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author united99
    Well, my first foray into blog marketing for myself rather than clients is out there now. (link below) Made a few dollars on adsense etc. I reckon the jury's still out on it tho!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Brian
    My first website was not about making money, it was a site for our high chool class. Made it 9 years ago using Geocities. Those times were memorable, it was the time when I got addicted to internet and making websites. I remember buying lots of dial-up prepaid cards, there was no broadband yet. During those times, I just made sites for fun, making money from them never crossed my mind (which is a thing I regret).
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  • Profile picture of the author xDennis
    Here is my first website:

    Phase I

    The answer is, no I did not make any money with it. It was a website I started but never finished.. i mostly used it to host images lol
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  • Profile picture of the author ecoverartist
    Some automatic domain grabber has my first website domain (I let it expire on purpose) and used robots.txt to block archive.org so I can't show it off.

    Which is probably best because it was 1994... 3D tables were the norm and the blink tag was oh so cool
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    • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
      In the early days, before browsers had a bookmark facility, I produced a little piece of Windows software called ClickerTX that allowed you to bookmark websites and email addresses.

      It made me a few hundred bucks and, more importantly, it sparked my interest in online marketing.

      I just Googled it and found 10 pages of cracks for it, even after all these years!

      Cheers,

      Neil
      Signature

      Easy email marketing automation without moving your lists.

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  • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
    Banned
    I tried looking for my first website on WayBackMachine and it doesn't exist anymore.
    *Walks Away Slowly*
    C ya!
    OK. OK. It was a load of embarrassing rubbish.
    Signature
    "Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity."―Joseph Sugarman
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    • Profile picture of the author Michelle Adams
      My first was pretty ugly but I've changed it now. I think I made $6 odd in the first few months from Adsense.
      Michelle.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jonathan 2.0
      Banned
      My first website didn't make any money because I was mostly promoting an affiliate marketing book which I read. I think I may have created another website about SEO. Then I decided to concentrate on promoting affiliate websites which I was passionate about and made something like $1000/month for a few good months.
      Signature
      "Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity."―Joseph Sugarman
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  • Profile picture of the author sjkstone
    I can't remember if my first website was sjkstone.com or solarpay.tk
    Both do not exist now but sjkstone which later became my web design portfolio, in the beginning sold an ebook package and solarpay.tk sold the stormpay payment processor script.
    Yes I made money with them especially solarpay because I packaged it in with a bunch of other stuff for $17. It did well until Google stopped promoting dot tk sites - I was at the top of Google for about three months for it.

    Thanks
    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Joanne Greco
      My first site was a heavy metal/hard rock board that I created in December of 1999. I started it after a bunch of us were dissatisfied with the hard rock forum we were on. It grew to be quite popular and it's actually still around but I've stopped promoting it and we don't take any new members. It's open only for a small bunch of us who want to stay in touch. I've actually made quite a bit of money from it through one of the forums on the board which was x-rated (we were a bit of a kinky bunch) and it had an adult shop.
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  • Profile picture of the author drm709
    I am still working on making more than a few bucks on each of them, but yes, I remember. I am here trying to learn some new techniques to improve them.

    Dennis
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Carpenter
    I put up my very first website when I was 13 (12 years ago) - LOOOOONG before I knew about IM. I put a banner ad for Pacific Coast Down Comforters, and at the time they were paying $0.25/click. My site was completely a personal site - I had javascript tutorials, a video game walkthrough, some inline skating (rollerblading) stuff, and other misc. things. I about died when I got a $250 check in the mail from Pacific Coast!

    The greatest thing about this all is that it was on Geocities, the grand-daddy of personal sites back in the day. http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/7160/index.html - I sadly remember that URL to this day :p
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  • Profile picture of the author winebuddy
    my first site was back in 1996. it was one of those "info product" sites that offered 170 or so info products you could reprint and resell for money.

    I offered the complete package on a CD.

    I sold..... 1 for $9.95

    But as they say, practice makes perfect.
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    "Knowledge is NOT power... ACTION on Knowledge is power"
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  • Profile picture of the author Sylvia Meier
    Oh my, my first site was in 2000 (seems like forever ago now) it was hosted on the school account when I was going to devry so no links. All I can say is it was the uglyist thing ever. We were learning basic html etc and I recall the bg pissing me off and not resizing so instead I tiled it all across the background, it was some ugly bird picture I remeber I thought looked pretty cool at the time.

    Anyways.....back to now and actually creating sites that sell lol..
    thanks for the time warp...ugh havent thought about that ugly site probably since I dropped Uni.

    And now I feel old...its been almost 9 years since that already.. yikes.
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    • Profile picture of the author Franck Silvestre
      Yep,

      Many of you are some Internet veterans! I'm a "baby" marketer (started in 2006) compared to many of you. Before that, I wasn't even using the Internet...

      It's good to read all those stories.

      Originally Posted by Sylvia Rolfe View Post

      Oh my, my first site was in 2000 (seems like forever ago now) it was hosted on the school account when I was going to devry so no links. All I can say is it was the uglyist thing ever. We were learning basic html etc and I recall the bg pissing me off and not resizing so instead I tiled it all across the background, it was some ugly bird picture I remeber I thought looked pretty cool at the time.

      Anyways.....back to now and actually creating sites that sell lol..
      thanks for the time warp...ugh havent thought about that ugly site probably since I dropped Uni.

      And now I feel old...its been almost 9 years since that already.. yikes.
      Signature
      Former Body Guard, Now REAL Traffic & List Building Coach
      >> HOT WSO: Six Figure Solo Sellers <<

      Winson Yeung said: "...Definitively A++ recommended WSO"
      Kevin Riley said: "Franck, glad to see you bringing out MORE and MORE GREAT stuff"
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[389345].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Dean Shainin
        I remember my first site was a PIPS by Stone Evans. I made a couple sales within about 45 days which ended up residual income of about $65 because of the way the program works. In fact that's how I found the Warrior Forum. I had to pay to get in back in the day.

        Cheers,
        Dean
        Signature

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        • Profile picture of the author Franck Silvestre
          Hey Cool Dean,

          I remember that I stumbled upon PIPS when I got started (don't really remember when), but I didn't get in because you had to upgrade to the 3 services I think.

          Awesome.

          Originally Posted by Dean Shainin View Post

          I remember my first site was a PIPS by Stone Evans. I made a couple sales within about 45 days which ended up residual income of about $65 because of the way the program works. In fact that's how I found the Warrior Forum. I had to pay to get in back in the day.

          Cheers,
          Dean
          Signature
          Former Body Guard, Now REAL Traffic & List Building Coach
          >> HOT WSO: Six Figure Solo Sellers <<

          Winson Yeung said: "...Definitively A++ recommended WSO"
          Kevin Riley said: "Franck, glad to see you bringing out MORE and MORE GREAT stuff"
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[389717].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author wealthwarrior
    my header had flames coming off the Title, like this...

    http://web.archive.org/web/200302061...ogsecrets.com/
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    • Profile picture of the author mikewa
      I certainly didn't make money on my first site, or my second or third! I was a slowww learner!
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