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It all started as a hobby. She began dabbling in
Web-site design eight years ago. when she was just 9
years old. She taught herself the basics of Web design
when she was not playing games on it.
Ashley created the site in late 2004 when she was 14.
Originally she created it as a way to show off her
design work to her friends and others. No one was
interested in it. Then she figured out how to customize
MySpace pages. As many of her classmates asked her to
design their pages, she began posting layouts on her
site daily, several at first, then dozens. She has come
along with the right idea at the right time.
Think of her products as MySpace clothes; some kids
change their layouts nearly as frequently. "It's all
about giving girls what they want," Ashley says.
By 2005, her traffic had grown and her shared
webhosting account could not stand it; she needed her
own dedicated server. Ashley could not afford the
monthly rental. Now she owns seven dedicated web
servers. Her Web host suggested Google AdSense, a
service that supplies ads to a site and shares the
revenue. The greater the traffic, the more money she
would earn.
In less than two years since Whateverlife.com took
off, she has dropped out of high school, bought a house,
and rejected offers to buy her young company for $1.5
million and a car of her choice. She supported her
father and her elder brother and now she supports her
mother.
How does she come out with so many designs every day?
She outsources the work to designers in India!
A friend sent me the story with these comments
written by a blogger – he did not mention the blogger’s
name. I am sure thousands of young Indian students will
find these suggestions very useful in building their
websites:
(1) It doesn’t matter who, what or where you are. You
can be a high school student in Detroit with no business
or web experience and build a successful business. In
New Yorker cartoon, a dog typing away at a computer
tells his friend, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're
a dog." True, on the Internet, no one knows I am a dog.
(2) Build a website business around something you’re
passionate about. Ashley didn’t start her site with the
plans to make it a huge business, she started it because
she found something she was interested in and just
wanted to help. That passion for your topic is extremely
important.
(3) It helps to be your demographic. Just like Mark
Zuckerberg at Facebook, a popular social networking
website, there is a huge advantage to being the audience
you are targeting. You understand their needs, their
wants, what they are thinking, and what they do and do
not think is cool.
I am waiting to write your success story. |
