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l Flawless l's Testimonial

How it all Began (2009)
I joined Hack Forums back in 2009, almost 8 years ago to the day. I originally joined because I was getting into the botnet scene and was trying to learn more about them, how they work, languages, and functions. When I first created an account, as I am sure many others were, I was a complete noob. I had no idea what I was doing and wasn't extremely active throughout the forum. After a while, I didn't do a whole lot with the botnet scene because I lost interest and moved on to more important things. I didn't contribute a whole lot to start here because I honestly felt I had nothing to give that people would benefit from. I figured I could use this time to learn and progress, even though I never thought I would contribute and assist people. I was never helpful to anyone, had snarky remarks, and was ungrateful for the individuals trying to help me, even though some were snarky right back.

2010
I then started becoming a little more active in the coding forums. I started to learn Visual Basic and C# pretty efficiently. I utilized a lot of tutorials and asked some questions here, while receiving pretty decent help. I attempted to help others as they helped me throughout those forums. I started posting some code to try and assist people, while answering questions for them. Unfortunately, I never pursued a career in programming, even though I would have loved to.

2011
I became rarely active during this time and didn't really post anything due to me going off to college. I would still sign in, browse through the forums and try to stay updated on what was happening on here. I kept tabs on things, but still remained incognito for some time being.

2014 to Present
These are the years I truly started to contribute to this forum.

Receiving Ub3r
In April 2014, I finally became Ub3r. This was actually a huge deal to me. I was extremely nervous to apply because I didn't want to be denied. I did my best to be a helpful member and post useful contributions to increase my chances. I was afraid I wasn't going to get it, but once I received the notification, there was a huge sigh of relief. That moment is when I actually felt I did something good for this forum, because in Omni's eyes, I was deemed worthy to carry this title. I always looked at Ub3r as the top tier and most respected, so receiving this was a great reward for me and am so thankful to this day.

Start of my Career
During my later high school and college career, I started to progress. When I was in college, I was in the exercise science program. I couldn't maintain a job due to the workload from college, so that's when I turned back to Hack Forums. I was Googling about online monetization and wouldn't you know, Hack Forums popped back up. I didn't realize for the longest time that there was a marketplace here (an extremely active one at that). Once again, I came back on looking for ways to keep learning and attempt to earn some online income to try and help make money throughout college. I spent countless hours reading jargon, even purchased some unfortunately unhelpful eBooks on here. I assumed all of the vouches were legit, but I learned the hard way they weren't. I ended up losing more money then intended. I didn't let that get me down and kept doing more and more research. I utilized the CPA/PPD section to help increase my knowledge and it definitely paid off. I learned some great tips and tricks on how to make some decent, successful income. It wasn't anything extraordinary, but it was enough for a broke college kid to buy food, textbooks, and of course some alcohol.

Personal Training
I slowly dwindled away from CPA because my niche that I was using became too saturated, so I was back to step one again, trying to make more money. I researched through the marketplace to see what everyone was selling and purchasing. I was trying to find something that didn't have much competition so I know I could make some decent profit off of it. After searching around, I realized a lot of people were selling the same items. I tried to find something that hasn't been done on here before and that's when I found it. I decided to use my degree that I went to college for and open up a sales thread where I would help individuals become more physically fit and engage in a healthier lifestyle. I would write custom workout plans and help with nutritional/supplement advice based on an individual's personal goals.

I became extremely active in the Health Wise section to try and assist individuals with their needs. My service started off somewhat slow. I had a couple of clients purchase a package as somewhat of a trial customer. After months of training, they came back with a vouch about their results. One thing led to another and more individuals started purchasing training packages. My services took off and I started making a nice monthly income. I couldn't have done that without Hack Forums. Even though I didn't learn about fitness on this forum, it was a great resource for some income and I would like to thank everyone who has purchased these packages. Starting this service also helped me with real life scenarios of actually working with clients in person. Individuals would ask me questions about the program and bring up injuries and it made me think and create a modified program so they could still benefit from it. This has helped me greatly with my career because I am now working with clients in person and having Hack Forums as a starting point (trial and error), I have learned more efficiently how to train people.

Cryptocurrency
Paired with my fitness sales, I took strong interest into cryptocurrency. I jumped on the Bitcoin train way too late, but was extremely intrigued with how it worked. I greatly utilized (and still to this day) the cryptocurrency section to keep up to date on what's going on with the market and engage in conversation about potential monetization between other coins. I literally knew nothing about cryptocurrency until I saw this forum. Now, I am day trading for decent profit, invested into multiple coins for the long haul, and greatly invested into this side income. I can't get enough of it.

Giving Back and Contributions
As stated, I was inactive on this forum during the previous years in terms of giving back and contributing to help the community. Since I was successful with the marketplace and couldn't have done any of this without the individuals in the community or Omniscient, I felt like I needed to give back. I have written a couple tutorials on thread designs, using Adium in terms of XMPP, done some giveaways, help individuals when I can, and of course donated to Omniscient and Hack Forums. No, I haven't done any huge donations here, but I definitely intend to! Honestly, Hack Forums has taught me to be grateful and appreciative in ways that I can't explain. I always love to give back when I can. I never used to be this way until I really started becoming active on here. Even though there are individuals on here that cause drama, I have to say that this is a great community to be in and I'm proud to be a part of it. So I would like to say thank you to everyone and a HUGE thanks to Omniscient for maintaining a positive and active site. This is truly where my career started. Never stop learning.