When I was 7 years old, my grandma took me to a butchers shop, she pointed at the sheep hanging from their hooks and said. ‘Every sheep at the end of the day, hangs from a different hook’.
I didn’t quite understand this term, until I started working online and slowly realized that you can not depend on anybody but yourself to run your life. When you want something done right, you HAVE to do it yourself.
So I pulled up my little boot straps and got to work. The first question is, whats the best way to earn a wage online? The only way I could see, would be an arcade site. Mind you I was about 17, so I hopped over to sitepoint.com and checked out the latest deals. Now that I look at most of these ‘deals’, quite frankly I can’t help myself from cringing at the thought someone is buying 5% of what M.E is at triple the price *sign*
I bought my first arcade site for only $300! It was making a dollar a day and I couldn’t wait to get started. I was going to develop the site, make it awesome, add features that have never been seen before and then! I would be rich! YEAH! I would be free from the enslavement of our times, things were looking up!
Then a harsh reality hit me like a b52 bomber. I didn’t have a clue, not a single clue on how to program or how to drive traffic to my site. Now I have to learn another language? I already know one!
My stomach turned as I slowly got into the world of SEO,Serps, PR and about every other buzz word the internet has to offer, I felt cold and isolated but at the same time a tingling sensation that I was about to learn with the big boys…O YEAH, Freedom from working!
Wrong again! (does this sound familiar?)
Even after learning all these terms and meaning, I still had no idea on where to go, who to talk to. Every programmer I hired, had completely ripped me off. $50 to add a paypal button! $20 to add a video.When you are young, you have this distinct ability to trust everybody around you, to listen to elders with wonder and excitement, unwittingly knowing they have planned their words and are ready to take you back to school. OUCH!
Now I know that trust is not easily handed out, on the flip side, DO YOUR RESEARCH before buying anything, ask questions, there are alot of sneaky buisnessmen out there ( you know who you are) Who develop such basic material and sell them on for hundreds, scripts that my team can write in 10 minutes…
I was getting no where, sure I was making a couple of bucks off my internet sites, only to reinvest and buy the following:
An arcade site, myspace search engine, forex affiliating site, blog, football forum, film critic site, banner site,site builder and of course Happar version 1;)
I worked so so hard to buy out happar version 1, this script was basically genius, it could create new pages everytime a user made a search, thus bringing you traffic and money!
I made 7 thousand dollars off my version 1 sites, I put it on clickbank and copies flew off the shelves, praise and glory and most of all FREEDOM!
Wrong…
After one month at the top, making money, living like a little prince, my good friends over at google decided ‘CONTENT IS KING’ and banned all the sites, which were inter linked.( that has been changed since ;) people lost their sites from the index and I had to dish out refunds.
This was when I had lost my nerv and I went to the window and shouted ‘I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE’ I sat down and starting planning the worlds greatest white hat script, something that google would love, something that even the seo champions of the internet would respect, something that was everything, something that made EVERYBODY independent and made lives easier when building sites, no codes no seo no more BS.
Wrong…. Real life hit me and my father died, he told me some words on his death bed that enchanted me mentally
”Never give up, we are human, we are the most powerful being on earth, we are a beautiful race and our love is endless. I was only 20 by this stage.
8 months and $40,000 dollars later
HAPPAR M.E was being born, we worked tirelessly adding one feature after another. I had 2 jobs and made sure everybody was paid well above the minimum wage for their programming, we went through programmers like butter, they would just rip me off.
8 months of trial and error we finally landed the perfect team. Happar M.E was released on the 27th of febuary, since then we have upgraded and patched any bugs within the day. We have over 1000 satisfied customers, moving to a nice sunny location a house on the beach and I have never been so proud to run happar.com, my vision is for a better world, I have lost money, made money, lost family and lost hope but at the end of the day if I can continue to make people’s lives easier, then only the grave will stop me.
What have I learnt from all this?
Patience, hard work, patience and a whole lotta love for my customers, work for yourself and work for your future, plan and don’t even bother with people who don’t keep their word.
I just had to get that off my chest.
Paul Coskun
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Contributor's Note
I hope my story can inspire you to make money and live your dreams.
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