I Made $92,161 Online In One Day. Here’s What I Learned.

I know what you’re thinking; “You lucky bastard, how the hell did you do that?”

Slow down, we’ll get there.

First, let me say that $92,161 is a lot of money to me. Hell, it’s two years salary for many Americans. Seeing that amount of money hit my bank account left me sitting at my kitchen table staring off into space for not a short amount of time.

No words. No jumping up and down. Just staring toward the refrigerator thinking different versions of “this can’t be real life.”

Three years prior, my tax guy (of all people) told me a story of how he had made some money trading cryptocurrency and digital assets known as non-fungible tokens (NFT’s). I ignored it at first, but curiosity would eventually get the best of me.

For the next two years I immersed myself in that world, soaking up knowledge day and night. I had created different wallets for the currencies I traded, used different exchanges, and lived on Twitter where I’d consume countless hours tracking how NFT traders operated and how money flowed in that ecosystem.

To that note, one disclaimer:

While I made that amount of money in one day, the process of deep learning had gone over a year and a half at that point.

I would wake up in the middle of the night to mint a project or check Twitter to see if I was missing anything.

In hindsight, I likely spent over 1000 hours studying this new hobby.

I settled in on a strategy of identifying quality creators early, and through a process called “minting” would buy their digital assets without knowing exactly what piece I would get. I counted on a worst case scenario of a small loss (maybe $100) and a more likely scenario of a small profit. The key was a possible upside of 100x your initial investment.

I ran that same strategy more times that I can count.

So one warm July day, I woke up knowing that I would mint a project from a creator I liked that morning. The plan was to mint early as these projects sometimes sell out. The average collection has 10,000 pieces and they would often sell out in less than an hour. I wanted to mint as soon as possible, which meant 9 am. Although I had worked to get a reserved spot called a “whitelist”, I didn’t want to take the chance.

After a rough night’s sleep (we had a newborn) I actually minted closer to 9:30 am. My wife thought I was crazy, buying a cartoon animal picture sight unseen, for a cost of about $500.

It wasn’t until days later when I started getting email offers for thousands of dollars that I realized I must have gotten something good. Turns out, I had minted the rarest piece in the entire 10,000 piece collection.

I held that piece for about 8 months, until someone offered me the amount listed above. I sold it and never looked back.

While I don’t dabble much in that world now, the

Here’s 4 lessons that I learned:

Lesson #1

The excitement is real, but it wears off real quick.

The old worry of “do I have enough money?” is simply replaced by “how do I protect and grow this new money?” I actually worried more after this payday than before.

Lesson #2

Your brain will play games with you when you come into money.

It’ll tell you all the fun things you can buy. Entertain that thought, and keep it as a thought only. I haven’t spent a dime of the money and instead invest it. Learn the psychology of money before you have it. That’s the only way to keep it.

Lesson #3

You expect your life will change. It won’t.

The money exists only as numbers on a screen. You’ll remain the exact same person with most of the same problems. Of course, it can solve some money problems. If you share that you have come into money, it’ll likely just create new problems for you.

Lesson #4

Keep it quiet.

None of my friends or my wife’s friends know. Only our parents. I can’t think of a single benefit to telling our friends and extended family. And none of them know I write on Medium so I think we’re still safe!

Lesson #5

“Luck” comes most often to the obsessed.

I was insanely lucky to mint the piece that I did. I was also insanely obsessed for almost two years knowing that a large win would be the likely outcome.

You can make money just about anywhere online, but you’re going to have to be willing to do what most people won’t.