ThePlugMichael
Newbie
- Aug 14, 2018
- 43
- 68
No this is not a doomer post, more of a reflection / maybe someone that has been doing this the same length as me or even less can relate to.
About me
I'm 22 years old been making money on the internet for about 9-10 years but somewhat well for about 8 years. Lowkey started on BHW you can look at my old posts and see some posts about some things I mention here haha.
Context
14 I was doing CPA (iPhone X & Robux Giveaways) nothing insane just a couple hundred dollars a month and one of the first times i actually got something working (before I was doing Youtube & Selling reps on eBay lol)
15 I built a meme page and that was my big win.
From 15 -17 I built one of the biggest meme pages in the UK, peaked at 650k followers. making $5-6k a month from just the page & I was also investing in crypto.
So at 17 in 2021 as I was finishing up studies my networth peaked at like $100k usd (£70,000 gbp but yeah) - which truthfully to this day has been my peal networth but we'll get to that.
I was able to stack this much money up because I was a literally a kid from lower income so if i was fed, had nice clothes & treating my mum i didn't need anything else.
This changed in 2022 when my meme page got banned and i lost a lot of my net to the crypto crash of end of 2021 start of 2022.
Restarting in 2022
I was turning 18, leaving school and felt like i had the best set up stripped away from me, luckily i wanted to pivot out of meme pages around that time already, or more so build more of a brand around them.
Made a marketing agency which originally was gonna be my way of upselling promotions on me and my friends pages at a crazy premium but after getting it banned turned into a social media management agency.
2022-23 felt like a very dark year for me but looking back it was just the start LMAO, i'm on Upwork looking for clients. charging $300-800 a month for social media management, content creation and planning because i was too nervous to charge higher, while outsourcing the work for $150-200 so barely making a profit. just headache for little upside lol. my first time managing a team, my first time dealing with clients full time, deffo learnt a lot.
Peaked at like 8k a month rev at 50% margins so not far off from what the meme page was making but didn't feel like it due to the work in comparison.
Downfall of Agency & The Year of Stagnancy
As 2022 is coming to a close I realise im 6 months out of school, 18 years old, been making money for 4 years and haven't really enjoyed my life. started going on holidays, even using revenue before paying contractors to spend on these trips (big regret and I have learnt from this) The entire agency started crumbling, team isn't being paid so they're not doing service delivery i'm trying to bill clients for their new month to pay my team but they don't wanna rebill since work was sloppy the month prior so it's a cycle of dispair that ended up making the agency crumble.
Is it fucked that the whole thing was kind of freeing? Yes I had no income but getting that whatsapp message at 2am because a client is annoyed didn't feel like it was worth the $500 a month retainer.
2023 comes around and I still got a little money left over so again i just enjoy my life from january to ocotber i'm taking girls out, partying etc. My agency money ran out quickly but at the same time i'm making a name for myself in my space so i'm making money from connecting people together and charging a little brokeage fee for deals, just enough to party away the real issue that i'm lost and idk what i'm doing. I'm 19 now and it's like 1am in my bedroom idk what hits me but i realised that nobody is gonna save me. It's the first time i've thought about that but it's also the first time i've ever HAD to think about that. because I was also doing stuff myself the time where i wasn't i thought maybe something is coming. but that's not how life works.
Broke as fuck i open my laptop, hire some outreach people on commision, buy some facebook and IG accounts for outreach and get to work, i wanna say in 3 months scaled to $6k a month with slighty better margins (60%) and a better understanding of service delivery on my end so i'm closing more but because i was still optimising for cheap labour i wasn't able to translate it well to the team so there was still that churn in clients.
My Saving Grace
Now it's couple months into 2024, i'm 19 turning 20 & yes i'm making money but i don't want this to be my life really and truly. I hate speaking to these clients i get anxiety everytime they message, i'm churning through them and theres no asymmetry here. A friend of mine that also makes money online, known him since 2022 but got really close in 2023 he's doing ecom he pitches the thought of doing Onlyfans management at this time (Feb 2024) I turn down the idea, i'm looking to get closer to God at this time etc i wanna say 6 weeks go by and I lose clients again, the cycle continues.
Then i say fuck it, we revisit the onlyfans management idea in april of 2024, I hit up a girl I went to school with I learn reddit in 2 days and our first month we did $25k revenue. (about $7-8k personal) I was thinking this is it, the next month, another 20k, month after that 15k, In june she's stablising at about 12k a month but it's fine we're bringing on another model, she grows a bit slower but still making decent money. Then we run into the infamous reddit bans. I spent the ENTIRE summer trying to crack reddit and still couldn't fully do it without churning through an account every 2 days. I drop the first model since she didn't wanna diversify platforms, the second model sticks with us for like a month longer then leaves then we end up in the same place I was end of 2023 start of 2024. Broke with no movement.
Takes another month or 2 to find another model, I don't take the reddit route because I know how it goes instead was doing Twitter replies with her and although slower was MUCH more stable, first month 5k, second month 8k, third month 10k.
My The End of The Beginning
That $10k a month with this model using Twitter for traffic landed right at the start of 2025. Which is the exact same moment that I saw someone that me and my business partner used to know post a bugatti on X i literally said WTF out loud, he was doing crypto and anyone familiar with the space knows that 2024 was an insane year for memecoins, it's a bit fucked because 2024 while we were having success with OFM my business partner said we should look into crypto but I have such tunnel vision that I don't like completely switching business models because a couple people are making money. I didn't realise at the time that EVERYONE was making money lmao.
But I do know a couple people in crypto at this point, I made a groupchat THAT night and for like a couple months just regular trenching, calls etc are happening in the chat nothing crazy. we're also managing the model alongside this ranging from 8-12k a month but take home personally it's nothing crazy.
March comes around, after nothing coming from that crypto chat I made someone who was the clear "leader" / knew the most about crypto messaged me and said he knows the owner to a very famous cat on tiktok and we can launch a token, i'm borderline broke, know nothing about memecoins but he gave me an opportunity. the person I am i took it and did my best. I brought in my partner and he brought in his.
I led website direction, community management etc
we ran the coin for like 2 days and i made like $19k.
first good lick in a little minute. got like $5k personal but was still good for a few days work. Bought a new laptop and we did it again, and again and again.
March to May we made about $30k+ each.
True Colours
May I let go that final model and I was all in on memecoins. Trenching & Launching coins daily. (quick disclaimer we ran community coins that we actually believed in) What turned into giving an oppurtunity on one coin turned into a group of people making money with each other daily, but the head of this operation started to show his true colours, overall is a nice guy just very very hard to work with, when he's down NOBODY makes money and if we mention it he will say "well go do it yourself then" we have a launch idea it gets dismissed, he has a launch idea we priotise it. So much other things but this isn't a gossip forum.
June comes and something happens where he doesn't come online for a month, July comes on for a couple weeks then is no where to be seen. At this point I have about maybe $5k saved up. My business partner is sick of this, thinks the head of this group is being selfish and as a joke sends a message to someone that is rumoured to have made millions the year before.
Long story short we meet him for dinner, we learn there's more to life than trenching and being at the computer 24/7 to launch pumpfun memecoins and teaches us about actual products packaged as crypto projects.
Turning Point
Without going into too much unnecessary detail. he teaches us how to build actual projects, me and my partner find a third guy to run projects with, end of 2025 we launch a project it makes just shy of $100k, January of 2026 just shy of $60k back to back, we have the "method" or whatever lol.
Looking back at this decision I am about to mention i think this is one of my stupidest ones, the guy that taught us how to do these projects asks us to do a project with him, me and my partner were getting tired of 50-100k per project and wanted to start doin 300k per project or just in general bigger numbers, the mentor asked us to start the project with him in January to put it in perspective it is june and it has still not launched, from feb to now I have just been rotting spending money, banking on this project etc.
Right now
This mentor is another toxic boss that wants things his way, i'm down to 0. I do have my own project cooking on the side. I have another mini one that should at least make 4-5 figures to fucking survive and I have a plan when i get to like 10-20k networth.
My business partner lowkey wants to pivot but I don't wanna do what he wants to do so I may go solo, which could work for me split % wise on projects I run alone.
One thing I feel like i messed up on recently is stopping our monthly projects to work on this one, but you live and you learn as you can see I have been learning lol.
The reason I'm doing this post today is because like I mentioned I wanna focus on the point that at 22 I thought I was gonna be rich, but no, still at my parents place, broke etc
But I know it's a journey and i'm probs closer than I think.
Really wanna hear where you guys think I fucked up, was stupid, didn't see the vision etc I wanna learn from my mistakes, esp from the outside looking in.
KEY THINGS I'VE LEARNED: I need to manage money better, i've set up a system that 50% of what I make goes into a place I can't touch unless emergencies, I'm moving to south east asia on my next big hit & using that to stack and i'm saying fuck lifestyle. I didn't mention all my holidays but i've done a lot, clubbed a lot, I'll still travel but i don't need to perform for anyone.
About me
I'm 22 years old been making money on the internet for about 9-10 years but somewhat well for about 8 years. Lowkey started on BHW you can look at my old posts and see some posts about some things I mention here haha.
Context
14 I was doing CPA (iPhone X & Robux Giveaways) nothing insane just a couple hundred dollars a month and one of the first times i actually got something working (before I was doing Youtube & Selling reps on eBay lol)
15 I built a meme page and that was my big win.
From 15 -17 I built one of the biggest meme pages in the UK, peaked at 650k followers. making $5-6k a month from just the page & I was also investing in crypto.
So at 17 in 2021 as I was finishing up studies my networth peaked at like $100k usd (£70,000 gbp but yeah) - which truthfully to this day has been my peal networth but we'll get to that.
I was able to stack this much money up because I was a literally a kid from lower income so if i was fed, had nice clothes & treating my mum i didn't need anything else.
This changed in 2022 when my meme page got banned and i lost a lot of my net to the crypto crash of end of 2021 start of 2022.
Restarting in 2022
I was turning 18, leaving school and felt like i had the best set up stripped away from me, luckily i wanted to pivot out of meme pages around that time already, or more so build more of a brand around them.
Made a marketing agency which originally was gonna be my way of upselling promotions on me and my friends pages at a crazy premium but after getting it banned turned into a social media management agency.
2022-23 felt like a very dark year for me but looking back it was just the start LMAO, i'm on Upwork looking for clients. charging $300-800 a month for social media management, content creation and planning because i was too nervous to charge higher, while outsourcing the work for $150-200 so barely making a profit. just headache for little upside lol. my first time managing a team, my first time dealing with clients full time, deffo learnt a lot.
Peaked at like 8k a month rev at 50% margins so not far off from what the meme page was making but didn't feel like it due to the work in comparison.
Downfall of Agency & The Year of Stagnancy
As 2022 is coming to a close I realise im 6 months out of school, 18 years old, been making money for 4 years and haven't really enjoyed my life. started going on holidays, even using revenue before paying contractors to spend on these trips (big regret and I have learnt from this) The entire agency started crumbling, team isn't being paid so they're not doing service delivery i'm trying to bill clients for their new month to pay my team but they don't wanna rebill since work was sloppy the month prior so it's a cycle of dispair that ended up making the agency crumble.
Is it fucked that the whole thing was kind of freeing? Yes I had no income but getting that whatsapp message at 2am because a client is annoyed didn't feel like it was worth the $500 a month retainer.
2023 comes around and I still got a little money left over so again i just enjoy my life from january to ocotber i'm taking girls out, partying etc. My agency money ran out quickly but at the same time i'm making a name for myself in my space so i'm making money from connecting people together and charging a little brokeage fee for deals, just enough to party away the real issue that i'm lost and idk what i'm doing. I'm 19 now and it's like 1am in my bedroom idk what hits me but i realised that nobody is gonna save me. It's the first time i've thought about that but it's also the first time i've ever HAD to think about that. because I was also doing stuff myself the time where i wasn't i thought maybe something is coming. but that's not how life works.
Broke as fuck i open my laptop, hire some outreach people on commision, buy some facebook and IG accounts for outreach and get to work, i wanna say in 3 months scaled to $6k a month with slighty better margins (60%) and a better understanding of service delivery on my end so i'm closing more but because i was still optimising for cheap labour i wasn't able to translate it well to the team so there was still that churn in clients.
My Saving Grace
Now it's couple months into 2024, i'm 19 turning 20 & yes i'm making money but i don't want this to be my life really and truly. I hate speaking to these clients i get anxiety everytime they message, i'm churning through them and theres no asymmetry here. A friend of mine that also makes money online, known him since 2022 but got really close in 2023 he's doing ecom he pitches the thought of doing Onlyfans management at this time (Feb 2024) I turn down the idea, i'm looking to get closer to God at this time etc i wanna say 6 weeks go by and I lose clients again, the cycle continues.
Then i say fuck it, we revisit the onlyfans management idea in april of 2024, I hit up a girl I went to school with I learn reddit in 2 days and our first month we did $25k revenue. (about $7-8k personal) I was thinking this is it, the next month, another 20k, month after that 15k, In june she's stablising at about 12k a month but it's fine we're bringing on another model, she grows a bit slower but still making decent money. Then we run into the infamous reddit bans. I spent the ENTIRE summer trying to crack reddit and still couldn't fully do it without churning through an account every 2 days. I drop the first model since she didn't wanna diversify platforms, the second model sticks with us for like a month longer then leaves then we end up in the same place I was end of 2023 start of 2024. Broke with no movement.
Takes another month or 2 to find another model, I don't take the reddit route because I know how it goes instead was doing Twitter replies with her and although slower was MUCH more stable, first month 5k, second month 8k, third month 10k.
My The End of The Beginning
That $10k a month with this model using Twitter for traffic landed right at the start of 2025. Which is the exact same moment that I saw someone that me and my business partner used to know post a bugatti on X i literally said WTF out loud, he was doing crypto and anyone familiar with the space knows that 2024 was an insane year for memecoins, it's a bit fucked because 2024 while we were having success with OFM my business partner said we should look into crypto but I have such tunnel vision that I don't like completely switching business models because a couple people are making money. I didn't realise at the time that EVERYONE was making money lmao.
But I do know a couple people in crypto at this point, I made a groupchat THAT night and for like a couple months just regular trenching, calls etc are happening in the chat nothing crazy. we're also managing the model alongside this ranging from 8-12k a month but take home personally it's nothing crazy.
March comes around, after nothing coming from that crypto chat I made someone who was the clear "leader" / knew the most about crypto messaged me and said he knows the owner to a very famous cat on tiktok and we can launch a token, i'm borderline broke, know nothing about memecoins but he gave me an opportunity. the person I am i took it and did my best. I brought in my partner and he brought in his.
I led website direction, community management etc
we ran the coin for like 2 days and i made like $19k.
first good lick in a little minute. got like $5k personal but was still good for a few days work. Bought a new laptop and we did it again, and again and again.
March to May we made about $30k+ each.
True Colours
May I let go that final model and I was all in on memecoins. Trenching & Launching coins daily. (quick disclaimer we ran community coins that we actually believed in) What turned into giving an oppurtunity on one coin turned into a group of people making money with each other daily, but the head of this operation started to show his true colours, overall is a nice guy just very very hard to work with, when he's down NOBODY makes money and if we mention it he will say "well go do it yourself then" we have a launch idea it gets dismissed, he has a launch idea we priotise it. So much other things but this isn't a gossip forum.
June comes and something happens where he doesn't come online for a month, July comes on for a couple weeks then is no where to be seen. At this point I have about maybe $5k saved up. My business partner is sick of this, thinks the head of this group is being selfish and as a joke sends a message to someone that is rumoured to have made millions the year before.
Long story short we meet him for dinner, we learn there's more to life than trenching and being at the computer 24/7 to launch pumpfun memecoins and teaches us about actual products packaged as crypto projects.
Turning Point
Without going into too much unnecessary detail. he teaches us how to build actual projects, me and my partner find a third guy to run projects with, end of 2025 we launch a project it makes just shy of $100k, January of 2026 just shy of $60k back to back, we have the "method" or whatever lol.
Looking back at this decision I am about to mention i think this is one of my stupidest ones, the guy that taught us how to do these projects asks us to do a project with him, me and my partner were getting tired of 50-100k per project and wanted to start doin 300k per project or just in general bigger numbers, the mentor asked us to start the project with him in January to put it in perspective it is june and it has still not launched, from feb to now I have just been rotting spending money, banking on this project etc.
Right now
This mentor is another toxic boss that wants things his way, i'm down to 0. I do have my own project cooking on the side. I have another mini one that should at least make 4-5 figures to fucking survive and I have a plan when i get to like 10-20k networth.
My business partner lowkey wants to pivot but I don't wanna do what he wants to do so I may go solo, which could work for me split % wise on projects I run alone.
One thing I feel like i messed up on recently is stopping our monthly projects to work on this one, but you live and you learn as you can see I have been learning lol.
The reason I'm doing this post today is because like I mentioned I wanna focus on the point that at 22 I thought I was gonna be rich, but no, still at my parents place, broke etc
But I know it's a journey and i'm probs closer than I think.
Really wanna hear where you guys think I fucked up, was stupid, didn't see the vision etc I wanna learn from my mistakes, esp from the outside looking in.
KEY THINGS I'VE LEARNED: I need to manage money better, i've set up a system that 50% of what I make goes into a place I can't touch unless emergencies, I'm moving to south east asia on my next big hit & using that to stack and i'm saying fuck lifestyle. I didn't mention all my holidays but i've done a lot, clubbed a lot, I'll still travel but i don't need to perform for anyone.
