Authors: Allen Wong
For those who are curious as to what happened to WhiteRabbit: A few months after the incident, I felt like I needed to get some revenge for what WhiteRabbit did to my mother. So I took some of my accounts, and sent several GunBound items to WhiteRabbit. Then in each account, I complained to the GunBound employees that someone stole my items. I also took some screenshots of me using hacks and modified them so that it looked like it was WhiteRabbit’s character that was doing the hacking. I then posted the screenshots on my Hackshop website and pretended that I forgot to blur out my account name. I then sent a link to Hackshop to the GunBound employees and complained that a hacker named WhiteRabbit was cheating in the game. The GunBound employees ultimately flagged WhiteRabbit as a hacker and banned his GunBound account.
Lifehack #17: Don’t conduct businesses that won’t allow you to sleep well at night.
The entire GunBound business gave me confidence that even an 18-year-old could harness the technology of the internet to become successful. What was also great was that building a website cost only a few dollars. And in some cases, it cost nothing at all. Back then, if you wanted to start a successful business, you had to invest in commercial real estate or rent a store or buy some products first before you could sell them. This new business model of low investment and high returns was what I aimed for. And it was a successful business model that I could apply over and over again to many products.
The GunBound community was small (users in the thousands) compared to the World of Warcraft® community (users in the millions). For those who don’t know, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), where you choose a hero and do things with the hero to get gold to buy better equipment or to level up. I figured that if I could create hacks for World of Warcraft instead, I would make way more than what I made when I was selling hacks for GunBound.
And that became a reality for at least one person. Another hacker/programmer had created a program that would play the game for you, so that you wouldn’t have to do the repetitive and tedious task of killing creatures to earn gold and experience. This program was known to hackers as a ‘bot’ (which is short for ‘robot’). He made a lot of money in a short amount of time by selling that bot for about $25 each. He sold over a hundred thousand copies of them, because a lot of people did not really have the free time to play through the game for hours upon hours to get to the level that they wanted. It was also worth it because you could take the gold you earned from running the bot and sell the gold for real money. This was what a lot of so-called “Chinese farmers” would do. Chinese companies would pay young people in China a few cents an hour to play World of Warcraft and gather gold for them. Those companies would then sell the gold for real money in the black market. This whole underworld economy of online-hacking and MMORPG e-commerce spelled for big money.
I could have easily gotten into this business. I had written powerful hacks and programs for the game. I wrote a program that would play the game for me as well, and it would help me collect the gold. The great thing was that I wrote the program myself, so it was not detectable by the World of Warcraft game client. The other programmer had the issue of constantly updating his program to keep it working. The company behind World of Warcraft would keep detecting the program and updating its game so that the bot would stop working. This back and forth went on for years until the company finally decided to sue the creator of the bot for violating its copyrights and trademarks. His bot sales ceased, and he was stuck paying the lawyer fees.
There was another story about how another young hacker had made about a million dollars a month selling his hacks. He bought two Lamborghini®’s (a Twin Turbo Gallardo® and a Murcielago®), but he, too, got shut down, and his high income was suddenly cut off. The sad thing was that he blew through most of his most money by throwing expensive parties and buying depreciating assets, such as his exotic cars. And this is a pitfall for someone who makes a lot of money in a short period of time. They think their high income will last forever, so they start spending money they haven’t made yet.
The problem with selling shady products is that you’d never know when you will get shut down, sued, or arrested. If I had sold my World of Warcraft hacks, I could have been in the same legal trouble that the other bot creator was in. I knew how much trouble I got from selling my GunBound hacks, and it deterred me from repeating the same mistakes. I remembered how many nights I had trouble sleeping because I didn’t know what kind of bad news I’d get the next day. I was even conditioned to be afraid of the new email alert sound. Every new email I got could have contained bad news.
This was not a risk worth taking, even if it’d make me millions of dollars. I would never go into a business where I wouldn’t know whether I’d still be free from jail the next day. Just the paranoia alone would have eaten me up. And if the business only caused me to get sued, then it would have devastated me to suddenly lose all of my income. The feeling of losing millions of dollars in a few days would be brutal. It was the kind of drop in income that caused many celebrities to turn to drugs after they failed to make another hit movie or another hit song.
That’s why I never sold my World of Warcraft hacks. I kept them for myself only. It was tempting to head back down that road where I’d continue selling hacks and making thousands of dollars. But having a clear
conscience and the ability to sleep well at night was worth more than money could buy.
Even in the present, the opportunity to run shady businesses with high income still rears its head every once in a while. I still do not think it is worth it and always turn those offers down. I’ve seen many young people take this route of easy money. Some of them get away with it, but most of them don’t stop until they’ve gotten burned. Sometimes being burned doesn’t equate to just financial losses. Sometimes their reputation gets smeared as well, and people start losing their trust in them. And since it’s hard to erase something from the internet, the damages last for quite awhile once your reputation gets ruined.
10
Career Path
While I technically started web development in my early teens, I never got paid for my work until my late teens. Web development was great, because it combined several skill sets that I wanted to develop. It was a mix of graphics design, coding, and marketing.
My graphics design skills were a natural talent of mine. Since I was very young, I could draw things in small details with accuracy. It could have been a talent passed on by my father, because he was an excellent artist as well. As I looked at more artwork from other artists, I got a better understanding of what was considered beautiful and what was not. Once you had the eye for that, then graphics design became easier.
My coding skills were a natural progression from my skills with logic and creative thinking. Those two skills were the reason why I kept scoring in the 99 percentile for national math exams. It was my lack of great memory and my small vocabulary that hampered my overall exam scores and prevented me from attending the top schools. Luckily, the ability to code relied more on logic and creative thinking than on memory. And that’s how I naturally progressed into being a programmer. It was a very effective use of my talents and my weaknesses did not hinder my progression in the field.
My marketing skills came from a mix of my experiences and my ability to sympathize with others. By always putting myself in the customer’s shoes, I gained a better perspective on how to market my products better. And through experience, I could tell which marketing techniques worked and which did not.
Through these skill sets, I was able to land a job at my college as a webmaster. I also was paid to code websites for other companies and even for a fraternity once (ZBT). While I had already known HTML, CSS, and JavaScript from developing websites as a teenager, I had to learn how to code in PHP and SQL on my own.
I remembered that when I first interviewed for the job of webmaster at my college, I admitted that I did not know PHP and SQL (skills that they were looking for). I showed them my portfolio of websites done in Flash and JavaScript, and they were impressed enough to give me a chance. I basically had a few weeks to learn enough PHP and SQL to create an entire chemistry department website. So, I used my free time to quickly pick up PHP and SQL. To this day, I’ve never taken a formal class on PHP. And yet, when I took a proficiency test at a head hunting firm, I passed the PHP test with flying colors. This pretty much gave me the confidence to believe that if I were given enough time and educational resources, I could learn and develop in any computer language in a short period of time without ever going to school for it. This confidence later gave me the motivation to learn Objective-C and to create apps when few people knew how to create apps.
But I didn’t jump into making apps at the beginning of my career. I went the safe route first and got myself a stable job. I was being realistic with myself, because I knew that success will not be achieved by everyone. I had to make sure that there was a safety net under me first before I took the leap of faith.
Lifehack #18: Have a contingency plan.
Some people get stuck on the idea that they’re really good at something when they’re only mediocre at best. They’ve lied to themselves (or they’ve been lied to) so many times about how good their talents are, that they start thinking that they can lead a successful career from it.
I would then see the same person spend years trying to book gigs for their talent and only make a few hundreds of dollars here and there. It was not nearly enough for a career, and they were only making ends meet. But they still go at it, because they do not know what else to do at that point. They did not discover what their other talents were and did not have another skill set to fall back on. When I started coding apps, I still had my web development skills to fall back on in case my app coding was not that great. These people did not have a back-up career, and now they’re practically living in poverty and begging for money (in forms of gigs).
These people end up being a drag on the family members who support them. Not only are they in a financial mess, they will most likely lose all confidence in themselves and have suicidal tendencies. And if they have children, then it only makes matters worse, because they are also responsible for providing for their children.
That is why it is always important to have a contingency plan in case your ambitions fail. That way, you can have the confidence you need to continue your ambitions without the fear of becoming broke. Even if you have a “never give up” attitude when it comes to your ambition, it is still good to acknowledge that there’s a possibility that your plans could fail.
When I started making large amounts of money from apps, I did not quit my day job right away. My day job was my contingency plan, and it helped remove my fears that if my apps would stop selling one day, then I’d become broke. It was after I made my second million dollars from my apps that I decided to quit my job. I had saved up enough money to last me for several years, and I would have been okay even if I lost all my income and could not get a job right away. That was the only time I was willing to let my contingency plan go.
However, even after I’ve made enough money for a lifetime, I am still exploring my talents to see what else I am good at. They’re more like hobbies, and I don’t actually expect to become wealthy from them. For example, I have recently taken up acting, photography, and even book writing. This very book is a part of my exploration of my talents. And because of my wealth, I am able to use these high-risk careers as my new contingency plan. Those who cannot afford this luxury should look for more stable careers as their contingency plans. And if you have a diploma from college, then you can use that when trying to land that back-up job.
Once you have that part of your life settled, it’s time to explore your talents and use those talents to launch your successful business.
Lifehack #19: Figure out what you love and what you’re good at.
I have a friend named Ariana who knows little about coding, but is amazing at photography and graphics design. Those who are in the photography business know that it’s very hard to get wealthy from being a photographer. So what she did was create a blog about her photography tips, and she made money through the ads on that blog. Sometimes, she would post Amazon affiliate links to the camera products that she used and gain commission for the sales that she helped make through her blog.
Later on, she became even more successful when she started selling Photoshop templates to photographers. The templates basically allow photographers to easily insert their pictures into a photo of a living room wall. This allowed photographers to show their clients how their pictures would look on their living room wall if they bought prints from them. It also helped the clients understand how their pictures would look in different sizes on the wall. She makes about $15,000 a month from selling these templates. And now, she has released an iPad® app called “Shoot and Sell” that does the same thing.
It goes to show that you don’t really need to be a great coder to create websites and apps. You don’t need to be the most talented person in the world. And you don’t need to be talented in everything. All you have to do is find out what you’re good at by learning as many different things as time will allow you. When you finally stumble upon a talent that you have a natural skill for, you should keep practicing that talent until you get really good at it. And to tell if you’re good at what you’re doing, you’ll have to see if people are willing to pay you for your talents. If they are, then you’ve discovered your main marketable skill set. If not, then you should just think of it as a hobby and move on with your life.
When you’re trying to discover your marketable talents, try to find something that you love doing. Sometimes loving what you do in life is what keeps you going when the going gets tough. Sometimes you just need to find something you used to do as a child, and expand on that. I loved computers when I was a child, and I made a business out of it. If you look at every successful person, you can almost always trace back their talents to something they did when they were younger. Whether they sang when they were younger or played golf when they were younger, they all shared the common success story of doing something that they had a passion for since they were young.
“
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.”
– Steve Jobs