My first 97 cents

It changed my life!

Twenty-one years ago this month, I made less than a dollar online. I have never forgotten how it felt…

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First, a little backstory, this week I asked Claude to start to document all my old posts, emails and notes it could find on goolge drive, icloud my inbox, etc., everything I wrote and my notes is out there somewhere…I’ve asked it to catalogue it… I am now starting to find lots of things I’d totally forgotten about … that I am going to shamelessly revisit over time!)

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Twenty-one years ago, in May 2005, I was down to my last 700 euros.

Not “tightening my belt” skint. Properly skint. Rent was 450 euros a month and I was trying to live on about €200 on top of that. The maths did not work, and I knew it. I’d been avoiding the inevitable for too long.

One night, late, I did what a lot of people do when the wall is closing in. I typed “how to make money online” into a search box and started clicking.

I spent $37 on one thing. Then $79 on another. Money I did not really have, on promises I only half believed.

And on the 5th of June 2005, I made my first ever income on the internet.

Ninety-seven cents.

Not 97 dollars. Ninety-seven cents, in AdSense, off a scrappy little website I’d cobbled together. Less than a dollar for what felt like a week of fumbling about in the dark.

Here’s the thing though. I did not feel cheated. I felt invigorated… this stuff works!

Because that 97 cents proved something. That a stranger I would never meet could land on something I made and put money in my pocket, while I was asleep, from the other side of the world. The amount was a joke. The fact of it happening was everything. (Over time that $0.97 grew to up to $400 per day…until Google took it all away, but that’s another story)

What the 97 cents actually bought me

It bought me time to keep going. it also bought me a path to another income that would save me… I built those scrappy little sites for $10 a time for people.

For the next eight months, I would do almost anything to keep afloat because I knew I could make this work, the 97c was proof, and it was growing every week. I wrote articles for 1c per word. I documented how I created the sites with a series of screenshots and sold that PDF.

I took the odd job building sites in bulk for $500. I did the unglamorous, slightly embarrassing work that nobody talks about, because I had decided this was going to work, and I was not too proud to start over and look for a real job.

By the end of those eight months I was having days where I made 200 dollars. From 97 cents to 200 a day, by doing the next scrappy site, then the next one.

I want to be straight with you about it, because the version of this story you usually get online skips the bit where you are broke and apprehensive and writing rubbish for a fiver.

Why I’m telling you this now

Because every so often someone tells me a 10 dollar product is too expensive for them.

Or that they would love to write, really they would, but they cannot find twenty minutes to do the one small exercise that might actually change things for them.

And I get a little twitch. Not because I think they’re lazy. Because I remember 700 euros ina bank account and a search box at midnight, and I know what twenty minutes and 97c can turn into if you work at it for a few years.

The start is always meant to be unglamorous, people rarely have a glamorous origin story. The grind and the dark days are the apprenticeship, it is the proof that the effort works, before it works at scale.

Unfortunately, most people quit before their 97 cents. They want the 200-dollar day on week one, and when it doesn’t come, they decide the whole thing is a con and go try something else, until they decide everything online is a big con.

You don’t have to be most people.

So here is the only question that matters this week. Have you had your 97 cents yet? Your first reply from a stranger. Your first subscriber who isn’t your wife (read last week’s newsletter if you don’t get that reference! I still haven’t forgiven her!). Your first comment that wasn’t a “good post” bot. Your first tiny, almost insulting little win that proves this just might work for you too.

If you have, stop waiting for it to feel impressive. Feed it. Do the next scrappy thing.

If you haven’t, then your whole job right now is to go and get it. Publish the imperfect piece. Send the email. Put the small thing out into the world today, not when you feel ready, because there is no version of me in 2005 who felt ready and I’m very glad I didn’t wait for it.

Ninety-seven cents changed my life.

If you’re still chasing your first 97 cents, the Write. Publish. Profit. bundle is built for exactly that: the simplest path I know from “I want to write” to “someone paid me for it.” It’s the monthly special at the moment. But honestly, even if you never buy a thing from me, go and publish something today. That part’s free, and it’s the part that matters.