I am one of the later generation of internet learners, and I came to an online world full of options to learn Esperanto. I have looked into Interlingua before by then, and there was basically nothing at all at that point to learn Interlingua with... I am pretty sure that's different right now, but then the massive amount of options for Esperanto was quite a big help for me to make the step!
So I have to really thank to people like Oleg for that, a brilliant guy who I had then the pleasure to meet in my very first Esperanto meeting abroad in Germany.