About

Gonzo Knows

A minimal, responsive, and powerful personal website designed to educate others.

Introduction

Short Intro: I wanted to create a personal website that is simple, responsive, and effective in educating others.

Long Intro: My name is Jacob Gonzales, though my teammates call me gonzo, which hints the name gonzoknows even though gonzo doesn’t know but the knowledge in which I do know, and believe would be helpful. I created the site to help educate others on various topics. My site mainly focuses around technology as that is my field of interest even though that isn’t what I study in college. In college, I am a double major in marketing & business. Short but might be long career path introduction, I originally planned to go to college for computer science. I took an AP Computer Science class in high school learning Python, I barely passed this class with a B but in AP terms that’s an A on transcript. Many people would see this as “are you serious it’s an A, an A is an A.” Though, Python isn’t a hard language when compared to bigger, more advanced languages such as C++ and C#. This what helped me decide on my alternative major marketing. Like I said, I always had an interest in computers and technology even from a young age, but I found myself very good at marketing, especially with organic results.

The Unethical Infamous YouTube Channel Business

I started an YouTube channel which now that I look back at it, it was unethical as it was focused on game modding. My first YouTube channel was also my first little side hustle or business. I grew the channel focused on gaming to over 20k subscribers within a year. When my channel started racking in thousands of views per video, I knew I had to take action to turn it into a profit, despite making money through Google AdSense. It wasn’t a guarantee, as the channel didn’t even meet the minimum age requirement for running ads, as I was in middle school. This is what led me to join a team of developers who created these game mod menus. I did all the advertising for them and got paid generously in commission. This is called affiliate marketing, but I wasn’t any affiliate, as I ended up selling my own products.

The Trend Market 3D Printing Business

I ended up creating .CAD files to manufacture and produce dozens of those fidget spinners in middle school. It was actually quite a success, as the school had a meeting with me about my popup shop business and demanded me to take my business off campus. I produced these fidget spinners for less than $2 and sold for over 25 dollars. I was importing my materials in bulk, which cut my cost of bearings and PLA (Plastic) down by a lot. Furthermore, I knew this was only a trend in the market, so right when I noticed sales slowly coming to a slow after 2–3 months of selling. Additionally, I started to produce less, so I wouldn’t be left over with a bunch of diminishing assets, or in other words, worthless inventory. When I felt time was done for this business, I sold the 3D printer for the retail price, in which it only diminished in value of $200.

Business Overview

If you are wondering “what did a middle schooler did with all that money he made,” well take a guess. I saved it. I saved 80 percent of what I made and when I turned 18, I put it all into a Roth IRA account. All the streams of assets from:

  • Google AdSense
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Product & Equipment Selling

Went directly into a Roth IRA, though now I wish it was into Bitcoin or even Dogecoin. Funny enough, there was a time when websites would just give you Dogecoin to view their site, and I’m talking 100s of coins for free. This would have converted to 50 dollars during its peak. I used to have a large wallet with Dogecoin with hundreds and thousands of coins as there was a Discord bot which you could pay people in the currency. Unfortunately, this was lost many years ago. Anyway, moving onto my site.

Socials

Extra Works

My Sponsors

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