Ashley Qualls : A Successful Entrepreneur Who Became a Millionaire at 17
Many of the people around us have a dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur in their life. But, how often do you hear about a 14-year-old teenage girl creating history in the entrepreneurial world?
Ashley Qualls, an American entrepreneur, from Detroit, Michigan, started her website at the age of 14 to provide tutorials in the domain of web designing. In 2004, Qualls released whateverlife.com providing mainly HTML tutorials and free MySpace layouts. She mainly opened this website as a hobby to help teenagers, especially of her age, learn graphic design and coding.
The First Step into the Business World
Qualls neither belonged to a financially predominant family nor did she have a lucrative investor by her side while creating her website. Her mom was a single mother and Qualls was the eldest daughter in her family. She really struggled her way to the top, and ultimately, became one of the successful teenage entrepreneurs of her time.
At first, 14 years old Ashley Qualls wanted to create an interesting website for everyone without any future perspective and strategies. Initially, she planned on publishing her own portfolio having graphics and pictures create by herself. Applying her knowledge of web designing in the project, she finally launched the website in 2004, under the domain name whateverlife.com. It was the first stepping stone for her towards creating something funny and attractive for the people, especially teenagers.
Just after a few months of the launch of the website, Qualls earned $70,000. Eventually, she started uploading different tutorials in her website regarding web designing and programming, thus, helping out the teenage students. As the number of unique viewers started increasing, many modifications were made to whateverlife.com. Every user, who created an account on the website, was allowed to upload their own projects, which in turn helped them gain more popularity and even earn rewards. These rewarded points are used to buy digital goods online.
This strategy escalated the rate of popularity of the page, and within a year, it had visitors from around the world. Whateverlife.com became famous among every youngster throughout the globe, witnessing 300,000 users every single day.
The Growth
Before the company turned three years old, whateverlife.com observed 3-4 million page views, especially, for tutorials of HTML and CSS. Qualls’s website became so popular that it started giving tough competition to websites like cbsnews.com and oprah.com.
In 2006, a buyer, whose name has not yet been revealed, offered a price of $1,500,000 to buy the portal, which was humbly turned down by Qualls. Her performance in the field was so impressive that Brad Greenspan, co-founder of MySpace, offered her a hefty amount of money twice in exchange for her website. But, Qualls had more craze for knowledge, and a passion to drive her business even higher than just giving up the ownership to someone else. So, she rejected the offer from Greenspan twice, irrespective of the money he was willing to pay. It is very rare that a young entrepreneur has such high spirit to turn down business tycoons and stand tall by her own. She also bought a house in 2006, where she started living with her mother and younger sister.
Soon, the number of visitors on her website turned to 7 million, and by the time Ashley Qualls turned 17, she was a millionaire.
When Life Turned Upside Down
The flow of success suddenly hit a pause when Qualls was diagnosed by an autoimmune disease, due to which she experienced gastrointestinal issues. The turmoil of her life wasn’t just limited to this, as she lost her business, her house followed by her miscarriage. But she never thought of giving up. She joined a job in 2015, which unfortunately hit an end the very next year due to her worse health conditions and regular visits to doctors.
But, after reading an article in The New Yorker by Meghan O’Rourke, she realized that there are many people out there who are suffering from the same disease.
SickNotDead
After realizing the harsh certainty that this disease will haunt her forever, and there are about thousands of women suffering from the same, Qualls decided to open a blog, SickNotDead. She accepted the reality and started writing to provide advice and support to everyone out there who is prey to this unfortunate veracity. And, through her motivational writings, she has been able to bring a difference in the lives of these people.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more