17-year old makes $20k/mo via Internet marketing, $370k so far | Hacker News Reader

17-year old makes $20k/mo via Internet marketing, $370k so far

reddit.com

22 pointsck211 comments

Whilst I salute the guy for showing initiative and entrepreneurship, I wish these sort of articles got less attention (everywhere, not specifically on HN).

These sort of articles are starting to get the feel of the 'Get rich quick' or 'Work from home and earn big dollars' ads you see stuck on walls and sign posts - it's the new Amway.

Agreed. This article seems highly suspect, and anecdotes about success are not particularly helpful in becoming successful.

The guy also admits to knowing barely anything about SEO.

"I have no idea about SEO, but if I can recall it was something about Web 2.0 blog links, high PR domains, etc."

I'm calling bullshit on this whole IAmA

It's a strange long game to post extended anonymous stories to entice others to compete with you?

Eh I guess I am a sucker to root for teenagers to become millionaires, even if there was luck involved.

I'm relatively young and entrepreneurial, and when I hear about people making loads of money in internet advertising like this (especially young people), my gut reaction is envy and jealously. I think "sheesh, I could totally be doing that"... but I always come to the conclusion that I would be absolutely miserable doing what these guys do, because it's just not something I'm into, and spending every waking moment doing something I hate/despise is certainly not how I want to live my life.

In fact, I cannot imagine being much happier than I am now. I live in Los Angeles, so naturally I am surrounded my wealthy individuals flaunting their money everywhere I go (houses, cars, etc), but despite all of this, I cannot imagine that these people are any happier than I am. Likewise, I don't imagine that I could be happier if I had the material possessions that they have.

This guy says he loves what he does and advocates others doing what they love, which is fantastic advice.

Who has a "best friend" who is a fitness trainer at age 17?

He doesn't seem to be US-based (mentions IB, and English is his second language) so not paying (as much) tax must help things.

It sounds like SEO linkbait/blogspam type stuff to me—he mentions surveys too.

I note that he claims to have 29 sites, but hasn't listed them. A simple list of the 29 super-duper money-making sites...that shouldn't be so hard to provide...

I wouldn't really blame him if it was indeed true. If he did show them, there will be 100 clones for each with a few months because they'd think that exactly the niches he's in must be making him this kind of money, and they won't bother to think for themselves.

And yet another Reddit post. When did Reddit start spilling out?

Seriously, could we please not encourage posts like this...

I did [PPC] for a month and made around a whooping $2.5. For me this was huge, and I was very happy about it.

I think that was the most important quote from the main article.

It's that type of excitement over relatively small gains (in most peoples eyes) that is one of the key points to becoming an entrepreneur.

sorry, but this is just another story about a teenage kid who did "SEO" to reap money from naive people and then brag about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com