The Technology Revolution
I was extremely interested in social media and websites in general as a child. Extremely fond of technology, I was investing my childhood learning more and more about how devices work, and the intricate software modification one can learn to achieve.
This interest was sparked by the iPod touch apple had released alongside other technologically advanced devices such as the iPhone, apple TV, and more. I was so fond of this iPod touch. I watched a friend of mine use it, flicking, swiping, and immersing himself in, what at that time, looked like a device from the literal future. I have to have this. I had to find a way.
As a kid, no way to make money, I begged my Dad for this. Giving in, and a year later, he caved. Not particularly happy, either. The money used on this seemed useless to him, and believed it could be attributed to something way more valuable. Little did he know, it opened a door or opportunities and allows me to make more than 250x the value of this in the next 5 years (posts about that soon on blog, if not already)
Hacking
I opened it up and jailbroke it right away. My older brother helped me, he knew much more than I did about computers at the time. As a group or desperate-seemingly siblings, we huddled around this device as if we've never seen anything like it before, as my older brother started loading apps and games.
I took 15 minutes using the device. Then, my little brother used it for 15 minutes. And finally, my sister used it for 15 minutes. It was an endless cycle. It taught patience, the values of items, and how although it may not seem like it, we were fortunate.
I jailbroke with extremely hard SSH commands and not like the 1-click hacks you see today. I had to find workarounds, and jailbreaking was at the baby-stage at this time, with only the real experts tinkering.
I loaded apps and tweaks, created wallpapers, custom themes, and got paid apps for free. (piracy, at this time, was the essence of jailbreaking)
Proxy for Launching my First Business
Instead of keep all the knowledge I had to myself, I thought why not express it for others' benefit? I launched a facebook page titled Jailbreak/iPhone Help. It dealt with helping others around the globe having issues or want help using their newly purchased devices. It was simple. You would inbox the page, or post on the page, and one of our admins would reach out to you and help resolve the problem in a professional manner.
Looking back at this, I find it quite a chuckle that at the age of 12, while my friends were playing xbox, I was running a page, and a team of 6 members by myself. I was head admin, founder, and commanded others on what to do. Few managed clean up of posts, a few managed monthly giveaways, and a few helped promote the page. Thats easy words for what you call Project Managers, Analytics Manager and and Online Marketer.
As a founder and manager, I launched a YouTube channel (which has now been removed due to copyright issues) that dealt with tutorials and help that people needed to see visually. Not all people are text literate, and feel most comfortable learning visually.
I launched several videos, each taking about 30 minutes of my time, from recording, to editing, to uploading. I started to get a lot of views, some hitting 50k a video. I enabled monetization not too soon later.
After 3 months of running it, I earned 600$. It may not seem like a lot, but while my friends were getting allowance or no money at all, I earned 600$. Its not like i'm going out with friends all the time, or paying bills, I had this money and it lasted for 6 months.
What did I do with 600$? View my next post to find out how I invested and earned 10x more.
Today, the page runs at 12,000 fans around the globe and has been abandoned (https://www.facebook.com/iDeviceAid/)