11 days in the new year, started great :D Chaos of end of the year accounting season, where no one cares about their firm except the accountant because government has deadlines and you don't want them to get fines.
Mixed with 3 days of not eating because of some nasty stomach virus. Not that 3 days of not eating would be bad form me, there is enough of me for my body to feed on, for more than 3 days :) but being able to drink water to not get terrible headache and dream about drinking water feels important.
Dreaming about drinking water because your brain tries to remind you you should happened to me only one time before. And it is semi connected with the video i am sharing. I will just say that happened because Rakija and Pelinkovac should not be mixed. Details of the story should probably not be on the blockchain forever :D But they did happen on this kind, but a bit less extreme sledding event :)
This was the first peace of content that made me money, and i am pretty sure it is still the most amount of money i ever made from online content.
And this put that annoying bug in my head that you could earn money from filming stuff. Well it mostly didn't go great after that, but :D
It was one of the first videos i published on youtube. Filmed with a potato Canon PowerShot A590IS 8MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom :). it was out for few months and had maybe 200 views on it. More or less dead in the youtube sphere. I can't remember how did they get my email. But i got a massage saying they are interested in paying me to use part of my video in a show.
?
Do i want to get money for a random video? Well it must be a scam, but it is not Nigerian Prince writing and they are not asking for anything so Yes i want to get money for my random video.
So because i said yes, he send my mail to some lady who contacted me and asked if i could send them the original file for an compensation of 200 American dollars. And if they decide to use it in a show, she will send me an email so we can arrange the payment.
Yeah someone wants to pay me $200 (at that moment pretty close to monthly salary in my country) if i gave them permission to use part of the video... Well it is sure a scam, not a good one as i don't see how they will scam me but a scam.
I was excited for few weeks, then few months passed and i forgot about it. After almost 6 months i got and email again. They are using it in a 4-5 episode of the show, will air in January and we need to arrange the payment. Paypal would be great. But Paypal and my country were not on good terms, so i was not able to receive money on my paypal account, i was only able to pay with it (i mean i didn't even have an account).
Well that sucks. But they could send me a check. WTF, they would send a check from US to Serbia, by mail? And WTF should i do with a American check? Well it still felt like a scam, but i shared my address and got a tracking number. The thing was flying all over the world, stopped in Germany and said delivered?
This is the worst scam ever!
But i did get an apology for the mix up and a new tracking number. And 3 days later a Fedex delivery guy showed up. With an envelope and a smile on his face. Delivery guys don't have smile on their faces and are not happy to wait around. But his one did, because i was probably his only delivery for the day :) I didn't see Fedex deliver for years after that. At the time i had no idea they even work in out country.
I suck at throwing things out, and i spend 10 minutes and managed to find the envelope. I am actually surprised :)
Finding a bank that can actually cash in the check, the process of it (waiting a month because they send checks to US once a month) was a whole different story. Imagine who easy is it now with Bitcoin or even easier with Hive.
"We like a clip you posted, we want to use it, here is 200HBD" 3 seconds later. "Wow i got 200HBD, nice"
They did use maybe 15-20 seconds of the video, with some "funny" commentary on top of it. One of those classic fail compilation video TV shows. I have it downloaded somewhere on an old old hard drive.
I could be wrong, but i think there is no one who would pay 200$ for that now
Those 200$ are still the biggest payment i ever got from an online content. Not sure does that shows something about my content creation :D