A story thread? Why not, I guess I could share something:
I used to got down the route society had paved for me - school, find a 9-5 job and life like a zombie.. I thought there had to be more in life, so I started out looking for ways to increase my income, qucikly finding out that the internet was the ideal place for that. Tried this and that, lost a few hundred bucks but never my motivation. I did "this" as a side job, made about $50 a month with AdSense and stuff like that.
Back in 2007, around the time I registered on BHW, I was sitting in class at a university, studying business administration. I wasn't paying attention to the professor, but instead was playing with the numbers of a recent campaign I had run, scaling stuff up in my mind. The number that I came up was around $8.000 a month. I was shocked. I calculated everything again and again, but still:
Eight. Thousand. Dollars. Per month.
So I thought "I have to do this right now!", got up and walked straight out of the lecture, right past the professor. Best feeling in the world.
I never came back. It turned out to be a little less cash, around 5.000/month, but that was more than enough to get me hooked. It did not last long, only a few months (blackhat at its best

) but ever since I have been making my living on the internet.
Have seen ups and downs, made six figures, spent it all, made nothing at all for a certain (recent and horrible) period but now I'm doing okay again.
That's the short version of my story, hope you like it.
PS: I'm not saying that anyone should quit there education - having no backup at all and losing your online inome is
really serious trouble. I was young when I quit university, probably would not do that again.