Ashley Qualls, a 14 year old from Detroit, Michigan found herself as one of the countries youngest millionaires all based of a single brilliant idea. Ashley started the website whateverlife.com, originally as a hobby but it soon proved to be much more. On this website Ashley would design and provide free MySpace layouts as well as free HTML tutorials for young people just like her. This website was funded entirely through ad revenue and allowed her to distribute her product to a larger audience for free. She used the basement in her house as her first office and made up to $70,000 in revenue in the first month. A mere 3 years later at age 17 she had made $1 million dollars in ad revenue. Many companies have offered to buy her site, some offers reaching up to $1.5 million dollars but Ashley has turned down all of them.
whateverlife.com, has become too near and dear to Ashley for her to sell and she has chosen to remain the sole owner of her company. Ashley’s story shows us that you shouldn’t let the money and the offers get in the way of what you love. If you love your company and you enjoy watching it grow you don’t have to jump at the first business that offers to buy it. Instead like Ashley know your ideas worth and value it as such
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That is amazing that Ashley has built this platform, and that she has been able to fund it only through ad revenue. Free is really how you get people to try things, and if they love it enough, they will go tell everyone, which in turn will bring more people to the website, which means more ad revenue. It is also great that she is not selling her website. She has built a platform that has huge potential – she could grow it to be much bigger than $1.5 million, or whatever anyone is willing to pay her right now. She also has the passion for the site and the business.
Who could forget MySpace! This is an awesome way to show how to put creativity into something and be successful with it. MySpace has such a large base of users and she tapped into them in the right way, at only 14 years old.
Talk about a throwback with MySpace. Advertisements are a great way to earn revenue especially if it means you can offer your service for free. It is incredible she was a teenage millionaire. I also admire her strong will to not sell her company.