How did I earn $ 200k when I was 16?

9 years ago, I wrote the first software in Java. A little more is that when I was in 9th and 13th grade and only 3 months of self-learning experience. Over the next few years I earned an income of ~ $ 200k . And this is how I did it.

From gaming to programming

It all started when I got lost in the game world. I spend most of my time playing Call of Duty, Gears of War, Runescape and whatever games I can get. All my friends will meet in these games to play together and we gradually move from meeting outside to meeting online.

The most addictive game among them is Runescape . It doesn’t take too long for me to love this famous online role-playing game.

For those who don’t know, this game is built using Java. After many times waiting for the download game, I became interested in Java and software development.

Learn on Google, I began to realize that if I knew the code, I could build my own software. That thought blew into my mind. But that’s just the beginning, my interest in programming continues to grow in the next few months.

Shortly after realizing the power of Java, I found a book called Self-learning Java for 21 days . I downloaded Eclipse and started learning. I’m fascinated by the book and even though I’m still a game addict, I love my new hobby: programming.

After school, I returned home to work, play games and code sequentially like a machine. I do not take much time to use my new programming skills. I have written code to scan documents, build random GUI and even write software to solve my math homework.

At that time, I seemed to have an esper power that nobody knew. Excited, I told my friend that I was studying Java and asked him to study with him. He just shrugged and continued playing the game. So I went on alone and no one knew – even my family .

Deeper into the programming world

As the months passed, I began to become frustrated with the speed of plowing in Runescape. So I started looking for ways to cheat. Surprisingly, there are many macros, bots and scripts that you can hang 24/7 for them to automatically play games for you. This fascinates me. I tried every bot I found but found that most of them were garbage. I kept trying until I found a community that provided a free bot. It can even run custom scripts. I participated in this forum without knowing that in a few months, my whole life would change.

This community is all that a child like me can dream of! For a month, I tried at least 20 scripts. There are some wood chopping exercises, some fighting monsters and there are other scripts that perform the task for you. What this bot can do automatically without any supervision is amazing.

I noticed that scripts were written in Java but I didn’t think about creating a script at that time. Immediately after using these tricks, my account was permanently banned for other reasons, not because of using a bot. I completely broke down. I remember when I was in the room, in tears because the account that I had spent hours in my life was banned. I pleaded with Jagex (Runescape creation company) to remove the ban but they didn’t give me any chance.

Turn lemon into lemon juice

For a week I was angry, sad and slightly confused. I was angry and sad for obvious reasons – I lost something valuable to me. However, I was also confused. What will I do now? What time will I spend on? What will I tell my friends?

There are many questions, but I have no answers. And then I decided to create a new account. The idea here is that I will use the tricks I find to plow the level back like the old account quickly. I decided to perform a mission back where I fell, but there was a problem here.

My previous account has a high combat statistic and at that time, the community doesn’t have many bots that can fight for you. So I searched and happened to find a bot that could fight chickens and I told myself: Why is it just chicken? Why not fight with monsters?

I came across the source code and that’s when I realized that with just a few modifications, you could create a bot that could fight any monster in the game. With newly learned programming skills and a little more creativity, I created GenericFighter – the first bot that can fight all in one.

After some testing and testing, I am confident that GenericFighter is ready. Any monster I set up to fight is perfectly defeated, and I am excited to not only use it for myself but also share it with the community.

Within a few weeks, it quickly became one of the most popular bots on the forum and my Runescape account statistics increased. I received a lot of compliments, but things didn’t just end there. I started getting new feature requests and error messages from members on the forum. I became addicted to programming, the rush to build a product that everyone loved made me continue.

This happens for a few months. Maintaining the bot forced me to become better at code and made me gain deeper knowledge of Java. At this point, I was completely ignorant of a bigger picture of life. I didn’t know that the founders of the forum had a plan to take everything to the next level.

I became addicted to programming. Attended by people.

I began to spend less time playing games and most of the time was spent developing bots. I work hard and people start paying attention. One day, the founders of the community contacted me. They are building a high-end market for bots, where bot writers can sell their scripts. I was a little skeptical but still decided to join. Soon, I partnered with the owner of RSBots.net to sell a premium bot called AutoFighter Pro.

Compared to other bots, AutoFighter Pro is offered for a lower price of $ 12.99. I do not understand how to divide money between authors, sellers and website founders. But AutoFighter Pro has over 30,000 purchases since early June 2009 to the end of October 2011. Do the math ?

Sales grow every month and almost never decline. As the platform expanded, the founders invited many new authors to sell bots. The original cooperation group became bigger and extremely competitive.

Not long after, the authors began building copies of each other’s scripts and competing for functionality, usability and price. You are not only forced to code but also sell yourself and your product. I quickly learned that every detail is valuable in competition.

I took on the role of Product Manager and Engineer at the same time. I listen to user feedback, plan new features, keep interacting on forums, and keep posting new updates – this becomes the standard for myself.

In this competition, downtime (downtime) is not acceptable. Users not only run these bots for personal use but also their businesses depend on them. Selling GP (Runescape currency) and high index accounts is a fairly common form, and you have to work hard to meet market demand.

Trouble in paradise

From the first summer to the beginning of the last year, my life included a full school day, an hour of housework and a night of code writing. This affects my academic performance to some extent, because I’m too focused on creating a better product. Writing code became my top priority and I poured all my time into AutoFighter Pro.

When all the ideas are completed, my bot can now fight at the same time with many monsters, automatically heal your wounds, automatically respond to real players and many other unique features. . But as you can guess, this cannot be maintained forever.

After a year of selling the scripts, there was a lawsuit against the founders. They fought hard for about a year but eventually lost the lawsuit a few days before my 17th birthday. This leads to them having to close all websites selling premium bots and forums.

To be honest, when I first started, I didn’t plan to tell anyone what I was doing. I was worried because everything was going on but I was also worried because I didn’t know what to do.

So who did I tell first? I told my mother. Her reaction? Feeling curious, a little confused and a little worried. She did not understand exactly what I was doing, how I was involved and why people paid for it. My father responded similarly, but they were happy for me and as long as I was legally protected, they supported it. I never told anyone else until I graduated from high school.

Right now you may be wondering, what does a child like me do with all that money? To name a few things: I helped remove family debts, took my family to Disney World to play and invest in myself . Looking back, this opportunity could have come at a better time for my family and me. It was during the recent recession in the United States, like millions of others at the time, that we encountered difficulties – but I am proud to say that what I earned has eased the storm. .

Playing games and programming changed my life

I have started programming, designing and managing products since then. As soon as I stopped working with the bots, I spent my free time learning Android programming.

In February 2012, I launched Follow, a Twitter app that tracks followers, who you don’t follow and who followed you. In a few short months, the app has reached 20,000 downloads. I wrote about how it got 150k downloads and now it has over 200k downloads.

After 3 semesters at university, I dropped out of school to start Puricode – a product-making company. We want to build products for small businesses and startups and release internal products. Our first project is Runn, an on-demand delivery application for colleges.

After two years, we stopped developing Runn and focused on other opportunities. In addition to my own projects, I worked as an engineer at a number of great companies: Nexient, Ford, Nima Labs, Gigster and Bird.

Now I’m in Santa Monica, working for CodeSigned – a catalog of brands, applications and media publications that I produce. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to turn my childhood hobby into work and I could not imagine myself doing anything else.

Source : Junookyo