Say what you will about the entitled group of teen
millionaires in Hollywood or music, but there are a few things you can’t
help but admire about kids who achieve similar success the
old-fashioned way: through hard work. Most of them aren’t famous,
weren’t born into money or privilege, and didn’t have endorsement deals
lined up around the block. What they did have, though, was an idea, and a
determination to see it become a reality.
10 Fraser Doherty: Grammy’s Jam
Fraser Doherty began at the age of 14, using his grandmother’s recipes to make homemade jam,
which he then sold
to his neighbors in Edinburgh, Scotland. By 16, he’d created a huge
demand for the stuff by tweaking the recipes on his own and calling it
“SuperJam.” Business picked up so well that he dropped out of school to
work full time, and he was soon after approached by a reputable
supermarket chain in the UK in 2007, who offered to stock his product in
all 184 of its stores. Taking out a loan worth around $9,000 from a
local bank, Doherty used the money to cover expenses, including more
factory time to increase production. And in 2009, with the help of his
supermarket chain connection and the addition of Asda Wal-Mart as a
stocking client, Fraser hit $1.2 million in sales. He also published a
book called “The Superjam Cookbook,”
available for sale through Amazon.
“I can’t be preoccupied with the money,” he says. “I make jam because it’s what I love to do. Success is pretty sweet too.”
9 Ashley Qualls: Layout Loot
In 2004, 14-year-old Ashley Qualls launched WhateverLife.com as a
means to show off her design work after a few years of studying HTML.
Her site had virtually no traffic until she began offering free custom
Myspace layouts
to fellow classmates.
By 2005, with only word of mouth for advertising, her site began to
explode with visitors seeking cool designs to personalize their social
network page. That was when she joined Google’s Adsense program, which
supplied ads to her site and paid her a share of
the click revenue.
With site traffic now buzzing, she began accepting offers from
various companies to advertise their products or services on her site in
exchange for payment. An undisclosed bidder even offered to buy out her
site in 2005, for a reported $1.5 million and the car of her choice
(not to exceed $100,000). She turned it down, opting instead to continue
running the site she had started on a total expenditure of $8 for the
domain name.
WhateverLife.com now plays host to an estimated seven million
visitors per month and continues to earn Ashley millions in advertising
loot. She bought her own $250,000 home in Southgate, Michigan in 2006.
8 Cameron Johnson: Greeting Card Green
When Cameron Johnson’s parents asked him to design invitations for an
upcoming holiday party they were having, he probably had no idea just
how far it would take him. Impressed with the results of his work,
people around the neighborhood began offering him money for other
designing jobs. By age 11, he had banked several thousand dollars in
revenue with “Cheers And Tears,” his own custom line of greeting cards.
Determined to keep the ball rolling on a good business sense, he took
the money he made from the greeting cards and formed his first online
business, SurfingPrizes.com. The site, a pay-per-ad toolbar service,
paid off big to the tune of
$300,000–400,000 per month. Before he even graduated from high school, Cameron had amassed a net worth in combined assets
estimated at $1 million.
Cameron went on to sell the company name and software at age 19, but
held onto the customer database he’d built up, leaving business options
open to himself for the future.
7 Julieth Brindak: ‘Miss O’ Dough
When she was only 10, Julieth Brindak began drawing a group of
made-up characters she called “cool girls,” including a primary
character named “Miss O.” At 16, she launched a social networking site
for tweens, called “
Miss O & Friends,”
inspired by her earlier drawings, and enlisted her mother and father to
help put the site together with their combined graphic and business
skills. It became an instant hit with fellow tweens who began visiting
the website by the hundreds of thousands.
“Miss O & Friends” earns Julieth money through advertising
revenue, and was ranked the third largest girls-only website in 2011 by
Inc. Magazine.
The site now generates 10 million unique visitors per month, is worth
an estimated $15 million, and continues to rely on word-of-mouth and
very little advertising for success. In an effort to give back, Brindak
also created a co-sponsorship with Simon & Schuster that offers
teens the chance to win tickets to popular concerts, such as Justin
Bieber and Taylor Swift.
6 David and Catherine Cook: Yearbook Yen
Brother and sister duo David and Catherine Cook became teen
millionaires by creating an online version of the traditional high
school yearbook with
MyYearbook.com.
After moving to Skillman, New Jersey when she was 14, Catherine says
she and her brother began flipping through the local yearbook to see if
they recognized any of the students at their new school.
“We were shocked at how useless the information was. That’s when we
thought, what if we put the whole thing online? I’d always looked up to
my brother Geoff. He’s 11 years older than me and had already launched a
successful start-up. I thought if he started a company, I could, too,”
she said.
Impressed by the idea, their brother Geoff invested $250,000 in
start-up money to his younger siblings, who then launched the site.
Pitching it as the “Myspace for high school,” they succeeded in getting
an estimated 950,000 members to join within the first year alone. Since
then, their site has grown into a business with a net worth of somewhere
around $100 million, with older brother Geoff working as CEO. The
siblings are now looking at options for moving their brand into
the global market.
5 Sean Belnick: Chair Change
Sean Belnick was intrigued
at the idea of selling things online—so much so that, at the age of 14,
he designed his own website to serve that very purpose. Having a
startup budget of only $500 for advertising funds and $100 for web
hosting fees, he began selling small items like Pokemon cards to get
himself familiar with the process. Before long, he’d switched to selling
office furniture on his new site, Bizchair.com—a move that ended up
earning him an estimated $24 million by the age of 20.
Asked if he felt he had the makings of an entrepreneur by way of
blood, Sean said, “You have to have a desire to succeed and take risks
to get there—it’s not for everyone. I love the excitement and the future
growth prospects, as well as watching the company grow and prosper. You
have to have ambitious goals.”
He now has over 75 employees who work for him, and is setting his sights on the
$50 million mark.
4 Nick D’Aloisio: Smartphone Smackaroos
Seventeen-year-old Nick D’Aloisio set the Internet wires abuzz when
it was announced that a smartphone app he created in his spare time had
been bought by Yahoo at the purchase price of a
whopping $30 million.
The Wimbledon school student taught himself how to code at the age of
12—a skill that paid off when he finally created the news app that
grabbed Yahoo’s attention. Nicks says he has plans to invest the money
he earned from the sale and offers
the following advice
for other aspiring developers: “If you have a good idea, or you think
there’s a gap in the market, just go out and launch it because there are
investors across the world right now looking for companies to invest
in.”
3 Adam Horwitz: Mobile Monopolizer
Having a goal to create a million-dollar company by the age of 21,
Adam Horwitz began launching
various start-up websites at 15. He created several that flopped before
finally hitting on his first successful venture with Mobile Monopoly,
an app that teaches users how to turn a buck with mobile market leads.
Sales of the app earned him a six-figure profit, which he used to fund
his next idea, YepText, a text advertising service for businesses.
He offers
the following advice
for others looking to tap into the app-making market: “If someone says,
‘There’s no way, you’ll never make money online, everything’s a scam
online, blah blah blah,’ they’re lying. You don’t have to listen to what
other people say—trust me, I went through that day-in and day-out with
my friends and stuff. They did not believe that I could make money
online, and then as soon as I did, I think their jaws dropped to the
ground. So
just go for it!”
2 Tyler Dikman: Technology Tycoon
Tyler Dikman started out
earning money like most other kids, by mowing lawns, running lemonade
stands, and babysitting. He even did magic shows for birthday parties,
charging around $25 for a 30-minute presentation. At age 10, he got his
first computer, a Gateway, which he proceeded to take apart and study
from the inside out. As he learned more about computers, he began
repairing them for his teachers in the eighth grade, which led him to
the revelation that he could charge others for repairs on their rigs. It
wasn’t long before he was charging $15 per hour.
He ended up landing a babysitting job some time later for the Vice
President of Merrill Lynch, Malcolm Taaffe. He was offered an internship
by Taaffe, which led to a full-time job around two weeks later. Tyler
was put in charge of computer acquisition, setup, training, and
troubleshooting. At age 15, he started Cooltronics, a business that
repaired computers, as a hobby. By hiring a few friends as employees and
working long hours, he nurtured it into a one-stop company that sells,
delivers, and sets up PCs for customers. He was named by Businessweek as
one of the top 25 entrepreneurs under the age of 25, and continues to
grow his business, which now does millions of dollars in
sales each year.
1 John Koon: Fashion Financier
John Koon is the quintessential American entrepreneur. Opening the
first-ever auto parts businesses in New York City, he began making
millions in profit at the age of 16 with Extreme Performance
Motorsports, a company that became one of the main suppliers for MTV’s
hit reality show
Pimp My Ride. Not wanting to limit himself to
the auto circuit, he decided to give fashion a try and soon launched a
clothing company alongside rapper Young Jeezy. Koon earned himself an
astounding $40 million in the process and is reportedly on the fast
track to
becoming a billionaire.
His latest expansion involves the first-ever Asian streetwear
couture, a company that specializes in Japanese denim, rare indigo dyes,
and cutting-edge secret wash
formulas for clothing.
Source:- listverse.com
