On my Friday, I got the pleasure of reading a very long/interesting article. The kind of article that makes you wish someone the best, makes you feel motivated, but at the same time makes you so jealous that it’s almost frustrating to think about. There’s no better way to explain it than that.

Anyways, the article was about a 17 year old girl in Michigan who learned how to design websites when she was like 9. She made her own website (whateverlife.com) where she would offer free MySpace layouts for other girls around her age. She dropped out of high school to do this full time. Yes it sounds dumb at first, until you start picking out the details of her business…

According to Google Analytics, Whateverlife attracts more than 7 million individuals and 60 million page views a month. That’s a larger audience than the circulations of Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and CosmoGirl! magazines combined.

If that doesn’t make sense to you non-web people, just think of it like this…..she gets hella visitors a month. Her site gets more visits than Oprah’s. And, she’s 17. So, if that stat above isn’t amusing, here is what that translates too…

Ashley’s home office is the physical embodiment of her Web site. The business brings in as much as $70,000 a month, but there’s not a whiff of corporate convention.

That’s sickening. This girl and her team (of friends) are bringing in major coin, dropping out of high school, and designing MySpace layouts, each of which don’t even take that long to make. That is just frustrating to think about. And she’s 17.

I will definitely give her credit though, she is one smart girl, who seems to not buckle under pressure. Based on the article, she seems to be completely business-minded and on top of everything and everyone she works with. She even had to chance to profit immensely and not have to work for a very long time…

In March 2006, an associate of MySpace cofounder Brad Greenspan approached Ashley with a bid valued at more than $1.5 million. She passed. Three months later, Greenspan’s people came back with a second offer: $700,000, a car, and her own Internet show with a marketing budget of $2 million.

Sorry, fellas. “I created this from nothing, and I want to see how far I can take it,” Ashley says. “If I wanted to do an Internet show, I could do it on my own. I have the audience.”

To turn down that much money at that young of an age is shocking. Since I have never been in that position, I have no idea what I would do if I were in her shoes. But she is damn smart in knowing that her business (according to the metrics of her site) is probably worth more than that $1.5 mil, especially once she starts going after big brands for advertising.

So, part of me is glad that this smart girl is so successful. I do find it amazing that she’s profiting so much from doing something she loves and providing a free service. That is extremely rare, especially for a 17 year old. I wish her more success.

But the other part of me makes me cringe. Why? Well, who doesn’t want to be successful like that. Reading stories like that makes me work that much harder. It’s motivating, yet humbling at the same time because success stories when starting web businesses (of that stature) are rare.

Ideas these days get you everywhere. You can always find people with the skill set you are looking for, but a small percentage of those people come up with the cash crop idea. And I’d be lying if I said this girl isn’t one of the small percentage of skilled people that had that one good idea to make her and her friends rich. And she’s 17.

Read the article, it’s worth it.

Peace

So everyone is on MySpace these days, and it’s kind of funny and fast things spread and how people sign up for it. When I first signed up for it a few years ago, I didn’t really look for people on there. I didn’t know anyone using it, in fact I think I just got a friends list this year! You don’t really realize how big it is until you start getting friend requests from people you knew waaay back in the day. (more…)