Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey Read online

  I discovered that there was a webmaster scene online, similar to the hacking scene I used to be a part of. A bunch of guys like me had their own websites and were trying to figure out ways to make money online. I picked up on what they were doing pretty quickly and surpassed them not much later, blazing my own path into unknown territory, and learning more and more about the ways of the web as I went along. I was now an online entrepreneur! A guerilla marketer! An Internet ninja! A lot of the ideas I came up with had never been done by anyone else before me.

  Suddenly my cartoon website was making money. Not much at first, but then the next month my site earned about $1000. Simply by being there. I wasn't even doing anything. I had just uploaded a bunch of my old cartoons, and now people were finding my cartoons in Google, came to my site, saw the banner ads on my site, and I was earning money.

  I literally didn't have to do anything at all. The way my website made money was similar to a TV station. When you watch CBS or NBC, you don't buy anything from them. But big corporations pay TV stations a lot of money to show you ads during the commercial breaks. Whether you actually get your ass off the couch after seeing that commercial and going out to buy a new car from Ford or the latest hamburger at McDonald's doesn't matter. NBC gets money from their advertisers, simply for showing you an ad for those products.

  Online ad agencies, who manage and distribute online advertising for their clients, call that kind of banner a CPM ad, or Cost Per 1000 impressions. If one thousand people visited my site and saw a CPM banner advertisement on my website, I earned $4, or whatever the current rate was for that particular ad campaign. My visitors didn't even have to click on the banner ad. Just the fact that they were looking at it was enough for me to get paid.

  Then there were CPC banners, or Cost Per Click. Those ads only paid money, if one of my visitors clicked on the banner. And then there were CPA banners, or Cost Per Action. Those only paid something, if one of my visitors clicked on the ad, went to the advertiser's website, and bought something there. Then I got a sales commission. My favorite were the CPM banners.

  The next month my cartoon site earned $3000. Without me lifting a finger! $3000 was the same amount I made as production manager at the newspaper, being totally stressed out, overworked, and miserable.

  I decided to build a few more websites, about embarrassing true stories, the secrets behind magic tricks, funny video clips, weird news, celebrity gossip, optical illusions, and a few other popular topics, using the same basic recipe for make-money-in-your-sleep riches.

  The next month my sites earned $5000. The month after that $7000. Then $15,000. And I still wasn't doing anything to maintain my websites on a daily basis. I just built them and then basically forgot about them, while they took on a life of their own.

  Thanks to my hacking background and my intimate knowledge of computers and the Internet, and my knack for cocky self promotion, and the things I had learned about advertising and catchy writing through my two newspaper jobs and my scene mag, and having learned how to get publicity by provoking people with my incendiary rants, I intuitively did everything just right, to make my websites a success.

  Back then there was no word for what I was doing yet. But a few years later, after the Internet bubble had burst and the dust had settled (What a horrible mixed metaphor. I probably just made an English lit major turn in his grave.) colleges started to teach classes on how to make money online. Today that is called "affiliate marketing."

  The funny thing is, when I started thinking about ever new ways to make money with CPM, CPC or CPA ads, I figured that I could make a lot more money with CPA ads, if I posted my advertiser's links directly into search engines, instead of on my own sites. Think about it: How many people who came to my cartoon site were actually looking to buy a new car at that moment? Not too many. They were just there to look at my funny pictures.

  So if I placed ads for a new car next to my cartoons, the chances of actually making a sale were next to zero. But when someone googles the nearest car dealership, he's obviously thinking about buying a new car. So I placed CPA ads directly into a bunch of search engines. The advertising companies I was working with told me I couldn't do that. They had never seen anyone do that before, and they felt it wasn't kosher. They felt that somehow I was cheating the system and they told me to stop.

  I had been ahead of my time again when I did that back then. But nowadays, placing CPA ads in search engines is the backbone of affiliate marketing. Nowadays everyone does it. Go figure.

  Ironically, a lot of hackers make money with affiliate marketing these days. Why bother hacking into a bank or credit card company, and risk going to prison, if you can hack into a search engine instead, and put a bunch of your own websites at the top of the search results, and make money with the banner ads on your sites? That way it's perfectly legal to make millions of dollars with your hacking skills.

  Anyway, my Embarrassing Moments website became so popular back then, that a Canadian TV production company took notice. They were going to produce a new show about awkward true stories, for The Learning Channel in America, and they contacted me to ask for my permission to reenact some of the stories on my website for their show. The show was going to have a few regular commentators who would introduce the next clip and put their two cents in afterwards. A little bit like the judges on American Idol, I guess. So I coulda been the next Simon Cowell! I coulda been somebody! But I declined. I was too shy to be on TV.

  I did give them permission to use some of the stories on my site though and helped them get in touch with the actual people those embarrassing true stories happened to. A few of those awkward moments really did end up on the new TV show.

  That Canadian production crew wasn't the only media company who took notice to my sites. A Japanese entertainment news show featured a segment about my Embarrassing Moments site and suddenly I had hundreds of new users from Japan on my forum, sharing their most intimate sushi-regurgitating mishaps and sake-soaked blunders.

  A lot of newspapers and news websites liked my site about magic tricks. There was really no other site like it at the time.

  I was in the right place at the right time and knew exactly the right thing to do to take advantage of a unique opportunity with these websites during the early days of the Internet. I felt like I was winning the lottery every day. It was crazy. My sites ended up making $1000 a day, $30,000 a month. I was making all this money without even really trying all that hard.

  I think Bill Gates said something along the lines of: "Always choose the laziest person in the office to do a difficult job, because he will find the easiest way to do it." That was me. I always figured out the simplest, shortest route to my goal.

  I designed and programmed all my websites myself. But I was by no means a good HTML programmer. I had taught myself the bare basics. Just enough to scrape by by the seat of my pants and get to my destination on the path of least resistance.

  So when the lawyer was trying to replace me at the newspaper, I really didn't give a shit. I didn't need that job anymore at this point, because I was making more money than the lawyer and all the other people in that office put together. But the cautious German in me didn't just want to quit a steady job and rely on free online money. I figured it was a fluke and it couldn't be like that forever, so it was probably a good idea to hold on to my day job.

  But I was miserable, and when that lawyer schemed behind my back to replace me, I knew it was time to go and take my chances with the Internet. I planned a grand exit. On the Monday when Kenny, my buddy in the graphic department, was going to start his new job somewhere else, I was going to go right up the lawyer and tell him that I quit and that he can go shove his stupid newspaper up his ass.

  Monday finally came, but as luck would have it, the lawyer didn't come in that day. I sat at my desk, waiting for 2 hours for him to show up, while I was playing games online. Around 11 am his wife came into the office to check the mail. I was getting sick of sitting there for no
reason, so I decided to make my grand exit with her instead.

  I took a copy of the classified ads. I had circled the ad for my job. Then I walked up to her, held the page in front of her face and asked: "What is that? Huh? What is that?? Are you trying to replace me?" I sounded like I was disciplining a dog who had just piddled on the carpet.

  She was startled and didn't know what to say. Then I told her that I knew she and her husband had put that ad in the paper to find someone to do my job for less money, and they didn't even have the courtesy to give me any notice. And now I was going to quit without notice.

  By now she had composed herself, and she was quick-witted enough to demand that I give her the keys to the office. I had already cleared out my desk earlier and prepared everything so I could storm right out the door after telling them off. But I had completely forgotten about the keys. Fuck! So instead of making a grand exit, now I stood there like a moron, fumbling around with my key chain, trying to get the damn keys off. Not cool. Not cool at all.

  I went home and felt like an idiot, because that did not go as planned. But, oh well, finally I was freeeee!

  When I didn't go to college in Germany and moved to New York instead, I had nightmares about it for weeks. I felt like I was being totally irresponsible and that I was ruining my life. Leaving everything you know behind and moving to another continent, and facing the great unknown, is scary. It takes a lot of courage. Don't ever look down at an immigrant who came to America to make a better life for himself and his family. You have no idea how much courage that took, until you have walked a mile in his shoes.

  Now, after I quit my newspaper job, I had the same type of nightmares again. Staying home all day and doing whatever the hell I wanted seemed so wrong, so irresponsible. A good German just doesn't do that.

  I did learn one thing from all that though: I never look down on poor people now. I've been there. I've probably been poorer than most people will ever be. I don't think a lot of people have stooped so low that they had to eat dog food.

  Capitalism has a dirty little secret: the system only works, as long as most people are poor, and only a few people at the top of the pyramid are rich. Think about it: if everyone was a millionaire, nobody would want to scrub toilets or flip burgers for minimum wage at McDonald's anymore. Money is only valuable, if it's rare. If everyone has lots of money, it becomes worthless. But as long as most people don't have any money, there are always plenty of people who are willing to degrade themselves for a few bucks.

  Self-righteous Republicans like to pretend that if someone is poor, it's their own fault, because they are lazy. But the truth is, the system can only survive as long as most people are poor. And I know from experience that poor people are not poor because they're lazy. I worked really really hard when I drove a cab, and made almost no money. And I worked even harder at the newspaper, but they didn't pay me all that much either. Now I was a lazy bum, doing nothing at all, and I was making more money than I had ever made in my life. That just didn't seem right. I felt like I didn't deserve it.

  It took me a few weeks to get used to my new life of luxurious leisure. I started to enjoy the fact that I could sleep as long as I want, and do whatever I want all day long. I enjoyed the little perks, like being able to go to the mall during the week, when the stores were less crowded than during the weekend. And I enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to impress anyone.

  I didn't have to dress for success. I could literally run around the mall in my pajamas if I wanted to, and not worry that I may lose my job if a co-worker or my boss saw me like that. I didn't have to put on a suit and tie to look like a trained monkey. Suddenly I was no longer worried about what anyone thought of me. The fact that I had all the money in the world and I didn't need anybody for anything made me a lot more self-confident. I used to walk into a room of people and wonder if they liked me. Now I looked around and wondered if I liked them.

  I bought my first brand new car, a Dodge Durango, all cash. It was my dream car, because when you fold down the backseat, the back of the car was big enough for me to lie flat, like in a bed. I figured I'd go car camping at some point and sleep in the back of the car. I only did that one time though. I went on a road trip to California. When I got to San Francisco, I parked the car at the Golden Gate Bridge and watched the sunset, and the sunrise the next morning. It was beautiful. Other than that I always stayed in hotels when I traveled. I never did go car camping.

  Having so much money opened up a whole new world of opportunities. Americans think that drinking beer or soccer are Germans' favorite past time. But the one thing Germans love to do more than anything else, is to travel. It's no coincidence that "Wanderlust" is a German word. That word describes a strong desire to travel and explore the world. It's something almost all Germans have in common. It doesn't matter where you go, whether you visit the Great Wall of China or the Statue of Liberty or The Eiffel Tower or Fort Myers Beach, you will find German tourists there.

  At first the fact that Donna was an agoraphobic shut in didn't bother me all that much. During the first few years we didn't have any money, so we couldn't really go anywhere anyway. But now that we had all this money, I wanted to travel with her. I wanted to show her Europe, take her to the places where I grew up, and go explore new places with her where I had never been before. But none of that was ever going to happen, as long as she didn't want to leave the house.

  Every time I tried to talk her into going somewhere, even just to the movies or out to dinner, she got very defensive and hostile. Just like a drug addict, if you criticize their drug. She would instantly go to her nuclear option: Divorce. That was her kill-all argument: "If you have a problem with me not going to the movies with you, why don't you get a divorce and find someone better than me?"

  She had always been very insecure about herself. She constantly accused me of cheating on her, even though I never did. Years later, whenever I met someone new after my divorce from Donna, and I told them I never cheated on her, they often acted like that was adorable. Quaint. As if cheating is the new normal and the fact that I didn't cheat on her was weird. Well, it's not to me. Loyalty is very important to me.

  When I had worked at one of my two newspaper jobs, Donna often asked me, if I talked to any of the girls in the office. Well, yeah, of course I did. They were my co-workers. I had to talk to them as part of my job. But if I said that, she accused me of having an affair with one of them: "Oh yeah, you talk to your little girlfriend at work? Why don't you go fuck your little whore girlfriend?"

  And if I said that I didn't talk to any of the girls in the office, she would continue her probing interrogation, because she knew I was lying: "Oh yeah, so you're gonna tell me you are in the office with these girls all day and you don't say one word to them? Not even good morning? Not even when you pass them in the hallway, or you have to hand them a paper? You're lying! You're cheating on me! Why don't you go fuck your little whore girlfriend?"

  There was just no right answer to her accusatory questions, just like those trick questions they asked conscientious objectors who refused to join the army in Germany.

  When I drove a cab, and I got home a few minutes late, she accused me of having picked up and fucked some streetwalker. She would go on and on and on about it. When I got home at 2 am in the morning, I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with Donna all night. So I went to bed. She'd sit in the living room and wait until I'm asleep. Then she would storm into the bedroom, slam the door wide open so that it crashed into the wall, turn on the lights and start streaming at me.

  My heart pounded like crazy when she did that. It causes so much anxiety when you are ripped out of your sleep with so much hostility. When she knew I was awake, she would turn off the light, leave the room and close the door. Then she would wait a few minutes, and then storm into the bedroom all over again. It was psychological torture and sleep deprivation.

  She knew that I wanted to be nothing like my abusive alcoholic father, and that
I would never hit her, no matter what. She perceived that as a weakness and exploited it to the fullest.

  Finally, after she had stormed into the bedroom three or four times in a row to terrorize me awake, I told her if she did that one more time, I would call the cops. Of course she did it again, and I really did call the cops. They filed a domestic dispute report and told her she had to stop doing that or they were going to take her in.