Not exactly what you're looking for, but to help populate the thread, in the mid 00s I had a big chunk of accidental income that I didn't want to talk about at

Not exactly what you're looking for, but to help populate the thread, in the mid 00s I had a big chunk of accidental income that I didn't want to talk about at the time, but can now. I put Adsense on my blog early on and I'd make maybe $10-20 a day with no shenanigans. I wrote a post recommending a route planner I'd found (pre Google Maps). A month later my income jumped to $100-200 a day and it turned out to be due to the route planner post being #1 or #2 for the route planner's name! I assume people were clicking on my blog post, then clicking on to the real site via the ad. This state of affairs lasted for several months until the algo improved and put the real site on top for good. I can't remember the exact total but I had a good $20-40k out of it and it paid for my wedding.