Share how you got your first love dollar!

[seeker5]

For those who've read Steve's article How to Earn Your First Love Dollar and went out and earned a love dollar*, why don't you go ahead and share how you earned that first dollar*!

It could be inspiring for the rest of us, and a fun way for you to share your success

*or euro or whatever currently you use

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

I earned my first love dollar by setting up a website in French about personal goals.

People can join this website, write publicly what their goal is and write about the steps towards their goal, in a micro blog format.
Users encourage each others and the site has a very positive vibe, I'm so happy about it.

It took me 4 months to set it up because I knew nothing about website building, but now I can proudly say that I earned a few "love dollars" with it.

Now I am running out of money, so I applyed for part time jobs, even though they didn't fit my personnality at all (telemarketing). I was accepted after the interview, but a day before signing the contract, it felt too wrong and I called them to cancel, even if it means I'll have to find a new way to live because I may not be able to pay my rent this month.

The day after I took the decision, my traffic on the site increased by almost 800%, and the income increased from 0,30 cents a day to 3,30 dollars a day. It's small in absolute terms but in relative terms it's actually huge, like + 1000% !).

So that's very encouraging to say "no" to what we don't like

If you speak French and want to check out my website, here it is.

[seeker5]

That's cool! Thanks for sharing

[jamestl2]

I don't think I could pinpoint the exact day I made my first, but I remember one day, sometime last year, I generated about $3 in ad clicks from toptenlisted.com (my first website attempt). I believe my family wanted to help me out or something, but I told them not to (as it's against Adsense TOS).

So I don't know if I just got lucky, or if they went ahead and clicked anyway.

[carenkh]

Originally Posted by jamestl2

I believe my family wanted to help me out or something, but I told them not to (as it's against Adsense TOS).

So I don't know if I just got lucky, or if they went ahead and clicked anyway.

Well - your online family did! I remember visiting and clicking after you asked our opinions!

My first love dollar was a few years ago, when I got paid for leading drum circles at a science museum. Around that same time, I led some healing drum circles for a nonprofit, and they "passed the basket" for me - very unexpected! Fast forward to today... I got offered $1,000 to teach West African drumming at a school here!

Most recently, I asked someone to make a donation if they found a reading I gave them helpful - they did, and did! That was exciting.

[dalante]

I had been doing stand-up open mike gigs for a few months, and I was booked with a fellow comedian in a club in the east of Paris, to entertain an audience for an hour.

The room could seat 25 people, and almost all seats were taken. I'll remember this gig all my life. Most people were complete strangers (i still don't know how on earth they ended up in our audience) and we had a drunken heckler who screwed the last 5 minutes of the show...

Anyway, the owner handed us at the end of the show, fourteen euros to split between us, that was 7 euros! I was surprised because I even forgot we were getting some share of the revenues, I was just doing this for fun...

And I didn't only get a first euro-love... I got SEVEN of them!!

[jamestl2]

Originally Posted by carenkh

Well - your online family did! I remember visiting and clicking after you asked our opinions!

Well thanks for that then I suppose .

Man that was a long time ago compared to now, I barely check on that site anymore, maybe I'll go see how it's doing .

[songwriter]

Okey, my first love dollar was a CD of mine bought through a music store website that you can send your CD and they can sell it. It's not downloading, the CD travels (but now there are downloads too)... It was more than a dollar. Ten or so. And it was quite long ago... 2004?

[ssdonley]

Hmmm. to be honest I don't know if this was my "first" love dollar or not, but I started writing articles for Associated Content. Sometimes they will pay you a small up front payment for your articles, and you also get paid every time someone views your articles. It doesn't amount to much - but so far I have earned a whopping $15 and change from the three articles I wrote over a year ago. Every month I earn a few more love pennies for the page views
I have considered writing more articles for them, but I figured if I am going to put in enough effort to write something good, I might as well write my own blog and make the adsense revenue directly instead of sharing it with AC.

[TonyToneTone]

Mine would be when I was in 6th grade.

I use to buy a box of sour gumballs and then go to school and sell them. $25 for 1, 5 for a $1. Every day I would come home with some money.

When I got older it was closing my first business deal. I don't even remember how much it was for, like $300 or $600 but after that the money started really flowing in.

[Jake Birkett]

Mine was from selling my first downloadable computer game at Christmas 2005.

[BeyondtheWrap]

When I first read that article back in July, I thought it sounded good but I didn't really know what I could do. In my current life situation, I knew I love hanging out with old friends, but making a business out of that is just ridiculous.

The next night I was hanging out with my friends, and everyone was about to retire for the night. One of my friends, however, had a long walk back to his house and wanted somebody to walk with him. He asked me to and offered me a dollar. I accepted.

QED

(Of course, the trip ended up costing me $2 that night because we took the bus.)

[joyfulgrowth]

I had just made the decision to get serious about living my dreams when this acquaintance asked me if I could support him in dealing with a certain problem. It was a solemn thing to for the first time actually make a real appointment for a coaching!

I didn't plan to ask for money and just enjoyed the session, but at the end my client (who didn't have much money at that time) said he wanted to give me 50€ and if I would be willing to accept them. I especially loved how it was not coming from habit or a "fairness" mentality, but from joy and celebration: He said he was wanting to give me the money because he liked what I did and wanted to encourage me to do more of it. :-)

I felt really touched. After the session, I immideately put the bill into a beautiful frame and anchored the joy of "earning money doing something I love" a few times.

[Rachelle]

My first love dollar was made over 6 years ago. I wrote and performed a play about quitting my crappy job! hahaha. I called it 'Hate Your Job? QUIT!"

I later reworked the play a bit and gave it a more sarcastic title of "S.M.I.L.E. while you D.I.E" Which is an acronym. For something. Obviously. lol. I've performed the play in seven different cities!

[brendannz]

I've just come to realise that I actually made my first love dollar about 10 years ago, doing some illustrated cartoons for a fun reference book for a painters course at the polytechnic (community college)

Since then I've sold quite a lot of paintings, but never had enough to quit my day job..

Since reading Steve Pavlinas love dollar article, it inspired me to make some more love money, and started my own prints business for selling prints.. (profits about $120 a month)

As well, I hope to make some more love money designing websites soon..

and since money is the root of all evil, and this is post #666 I hope to make even more love money..

[fdr]

Mine came a few years ago from teaching dance. It was a donation-only class and my first time teaching a group -- so rewarding to receive cash from my students who had just participated in co-creating such a wonderful experience! Now, in a pure cost analysis, I've never made back the amount of money I've spent on my training -- but I also haven't devoted my life to this particular pursuit. The value that I've received has definitely been as great as what I extended.

[alsy]

In the past, money has been generally a bit of an issue for me to manifest, but other forms have flowed into my experience in numerous ways. I would Like to share my first Love Dollar.

My first love dollar was not in dollars, but in the form of marbles, fun, and play.

When i was a kid i played marble games with other kids. I asked if they wanted to "play for keeps", and we agreed on what marble we brought in to the game that would be kept by the winner in the game. As i vaguely am recalling in the beginning, my marble tally was about even. Win some, lose some. My skills began to improve, and the marble collection was slowly expanding.

If you have never been into marbles as a kid, i can tell you that they can come in a huge variety of looks, and some can be highly artistic. Some can be very pretty to look at. Or at least they were when i was a kid. Winning and losing meant that the types of marbles in the collection were changing often.

I noticed that some other kids were setting up a "stall", where the player stands behind a line and bowls their marble down the alley to try and knock the prize marble into a hole behind it. It is a hybrid of concepts out of golf and bowling. I set up my own Stall, and that is when everything picked up. It was that successful, that my mother made me a nice custom marble pouch that ended up bulging full at the end of each day. I loved it. I was getting my hands on some nice uncommon looking marbles. I enjoyed sifting through the artistic and unusual pieces in the stash at the end of each day. It was such a fun and joyous moment to win something unusual or that which i was seeking.

I wasn't able to afford buying new marbles like other kids, so the winnings opened me to the freedom of playing more often. I played in the stalls, and i played more one on one, which i enjoyed. The practice helped me improve my skills, and the higher volume turnover meant i then started to amass the harder to get marbles which i used in my Marble Stall business to compete against the other players and businesses in the yard. I didn't intellectualize it then, and this is all hindsight. I just "did it".

[aelle]

My first love dollar came about 6 months agpo with 23 of its buddies when I sold two of my handmade notebooks for the first time. I had had sales from family and friends before, but there is something special about providing value for a complete stranger.