Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

Back when I was in the LAPD police academy in 1994, I had a classmate who had just come out of Special Forces in the Army. His commitment was up and he decided to take his skills from the military and become a police officer. I still remember the first week of the Academy. For him it was like a day at Disneyland compared to his Green Beret training. About Day 4 we were out in a dirt lot at the top of a hill after running about 5 miles to get there. We were doing push-ups and I had lost count – a big no no.

Rather than doing the smart thing and being quiet until I heard what the next number all my classmates yelled, I did the dumb thing, guessed, and yelled out the wrong number. I was quickly surrounded by 3 drill instructors who immediately began screaming. I don’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something about the fact that they couldn’t believe the City of Los Angeles was so desperate for officers they would hire me to protect people. I looked up and saw Mr. Green Beret just smiling at me as he continued his own push-ups. I hated his guts immediately.

But one day, while we were running trails up near Dodger Stadium, we started talking about trading stocks online. Talking about something other than how hot, thirsty and tired we were made the miles go faster. He mentioned that he had started trading stocks online for very short periods of time – day trading – before the term even existed. I was fascinated by this and started doing a little research myself on the weekends.

(Green Beret dude I hated on Day 4 actually became one of my best friends and was in my wedding 3 years later.)

Fast forward a few months and I opened a small account at one of the only online brokerages at the time (this was a while before E-Trade and Ameritrade were around) and started day trading. I did pretty well and people started to ask me how I was trading. I got tired of constantly talking about it, so I wrote up a 5 page Word document that outlined how I found the stocks to trade and how it all worked. I kept adding to it until it was nearly 80 pages.

Being the capitalist that I was, it finally occurred to me in 1998 that I could actually sell the report as a book – online. I had a little money saved and spent the entire amount on a website and sold the book for $24.95 plus $3.00 shipping. Things were pretty slow back at first but I sold my first book in 1998 with a website with a ridiculous $100 bill background and 30 different fonts in bold text all centered down the middle. I wish so much that I could find that design now. The first 6 months people had to send me checks and money orders – I didn’t even know what a merchant account was.

Then one day, Wired Magazine called. They had heard about this cop who trades online and wanted to write an article about it. The scanned version is below.

(Click on the image below for a larger version)

I sold about 400 copies of my book in the weeks that followed, and the link wasn’t even in the article. I would print out copies on a black and white laser printer and bind them with a comb-binding machine in the morning. My wife would then take boxes of books to the post office in the afternoon to ship while I was at work. While we were waiting for my daughter to arrive from the womb, our days were filled with printing, binding and shipping. When we couldn’t finish the printing and binding in the morning, I’d leave for work and my wife would continue the process – sometimes until I got home again 12 hours later (God bless her – 8 months pregnant and all).

It was a huge win and it was at that time that I knew I wanted to make my living online from then on. It took another 2 years before I actually quit my job, and it could have happened a lot sooner if I had any idea what I was doing. I did no advertising and no promotion. I simply rode the “daytrading” wave when it came in the late 90′s and the damn thing literally sold itself. 30, 40, sometimes 50 copies a day. It was AWESOME. I can’t even imagine what I could have done if I knew anything about marketing like I do today.

But, courtesy of the Wayback Machine, here is the earliest version they have of my very first sales website (it sometimes takes a minute to load). Not a bad website design for 1999! Don’t you just love my “risk free guarantee?” I’m sure I swiped half of that sales copy from some other website that actually looked like they did knew what they were doing.

The book led to me starting a national trader organization which led to starting my first trade show and conference for online traders. One thing led to another as good things always seem to do.

It was an exciting time, and while I still get excited every time I get an email that notifies me our online cash register has rung, there was something very special about getting those checks in the mail back in 1998. Just like I wish I could find that first website design, I wish I had that first check. Things don’t seem like a big deal at the time – until years later when you have some perspective.

Does the Wayback Machine have copies of your first website? If so, link to them in the comments – I’d love to see them.

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