Myspace layouts made the Whatever girl.

Whateverlife

Myspace layouts - especially when they're free, are a hot item on the net these days. MySpace is the third most-visited site on the planet - a social-networking site at that. It's now owned by Rupert Murdoch who paid $580 Million for it last year. Cute girly Myspace layouts are a particularly hot item.

Ashley Qualls of Detroit, Michigan started a website three years ago when she was fourteen. Now she's seventeen and that little website has already made her One Million Dollars and gets more searches on Google than Oprah - it was ranked 349 in mid-July out of more than 20 million sites. Oprah was off-the-pace at just 469. Isn't that amazing?

So what's with the website? you're asking. Simple. Ashley offers free Myspace layouts and graphics. Targeted to girls like her. And the Ads on the site bring in $70,000 a month. How much did the Start-Up cost? Ashley admits she had to borrow the original $8 from her Mum to register the domain.

"I was the dorky girl who was into HTML," she said. But her site was "one of the first sites offering MySpace layouts specifically for girls." By 2005 her traffic had gone ballistic and she dropped out of high school to work on Whateverlife full time. She's made enough to buy a $250,000 house and uses the basement as her office. All at Seventeen.

Ashley or Ashbo to her friends "is the demographic she's serving, which gives her a powerful advantage over far more experienced adults trying to channel their inner teen or glean clues form focus groups." Its teenage street-cool attracts not only advertisers, but also the music industry. Mike More of Nabbr "embedded a Jonas Brothers video "widget" on Whateverlife. Within two months, 60,000 fans embedded the video in their MySpace pages, in effect becoming 60,000 new distribution points.

The Jonas Brothers song eventually reached No. 4 on MTV's Total Request Live, despite no radio play - which previously was unheard of.

"That's what made the whole thing intriguing...This teenager girl in the Midwest got more views for our video than YouTube. Way more. It wasn't even close."

Whateverlife is now a key member of Nabbr's network of influential teen sites. "She's helped break Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and 30 Seconds to Mars," More says of Qualls. "She was instrumental in breaking Lily Allen." Which is why Allen thanked Qualls in a Nabbr video that appeared on Whateverlife. Fans, of course, shared the spot, spreading the word and giving Whateverlife instant cache. Ashbo has been offered "$700,000, a car and her own internet show" to sell Whateverlife, but she won't. As Ashbo explains: "I created this from nothing, and I want to see how far I can take it." Besides, she doesn't even have her driver's license yet.

More here from Site Start-Ups

Whateverlife.com attracts approximately 7 million teens each month and is considered one of the most visited websites on the internet for teen girls! She recently declined an offer for 1.5 million dollars which is considerably low (in my opinion) considering Whateverlife.com has brought in almost 1 million dollars since it was founded less than two years ago! Some internet companies sell for up to 40 times the amount of revenue they bring in so I would estimate her company is worth at least 5 million dollars. I think her website has lots of potential for growth and could eventually be transformed into a popular teen magazine, web portal, or something of that nature. Not only does her age amaze me but also does the fact that she hasn’t spent a dime on any type of advertising.

Hasn't spent a dime on advertising! Way to go. She just has a product that her contemporaries want. Brilliant. I'm in awe.

Hey while you're here, check out these amazing dollshouse fireplaces that an English guy is making out of marble and selling for up to $1600! And they're only 4"×6".

Now back to our regular program. The Myspace layouts. Here's a snippet from an article running on Fast Company

Ashley had no connections. No business professionals in the family. No rich aunt or uncle. In the working-class community of downriver Detroit, south of downtown and the sprawling Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, she bounced back and forth between her divorced parents, neither of whom attended college. Her father is a machinist, her mother, until recently, a retail data collector for ACNielsen. "My mom still doesn't understand how I do it," Ashley says. To be fair, she did go to her mother for the initial investment: $8 to register the domain name. Ashley still hasn't spent a dime on advertising.

It all started as a hobby. She began dabbling in Web-site design eight years ago, when she was 9, hogging the family's Gateway computer in the kitchen all day. When she wasn't playing games, she was teaching herself the basics of Web design. To which her mother, Linda LaBrecque, responded, "Get off that computer. Now!" For Ashley's 12th birthday, her mother splurged on an above-ground swimming pool--"just so she'd go outside," LaBrecque says.

Whateverlife just sort of happened, another accidental Web business. Originally, Ashley created the site in late 2004 when she was 14 as a way to show off her design work. "I was the dorky girl who was into HTML," she says. It attracted zero interest beyond her circle of friends until she figured out how to customize MySpace pages. So many classmates asked her to design theirs that she began posting layouts on her site daily, several at first, then dozens.

By 2005, her traffic had exploded; she needed her own dedicated server. Ashley, who had bartered site designs for free Web hosting, couldn't afford the monthly rental, not on her babysitting income. 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'd earn.

This girl's my hero.
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More Free Myspace Layouts from this mob - Myspace Layouts

This guy shows you how to put your new Myspace Layout on your page. He's pimping his own designs but the same procedure applies for any new layout - just cut and paste. Too easy.
MYSPACE LAYOUTS & BACKGROUNDS - CREATE UR LAYOUT! - Watch a funny movie here

This is me and my baby boy. He's three now but we have a baby girl about to be born. I'm Australian but I live in Paris with my French wife. I have a Myspace account but I haven't used it much. I'll have to try some of these cool layouts though.

Have a look at this Geeky Hip-Hop Keyboard Player. What a trip this guy is.

Myspace Layouts Whateverlife