ashley qualls

Like a scene out of a reality show or a Disney movie, Southgate teenager Ashley Qualls' moment has arrived.

The 17-year-old entrepreneur, designer and self-professed computer geek is in New York City this week, pitching her wildly successful Web site, Whateverlife.com, to ad-buying agencies for the country's biggest companies. And today, Qualls will get to talk to the women of "The View," taping a show that is due to air on Friday.

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"This is in some ways her coming-out party," said Robb Lippitt, Qualls' 38-year-old business consultant.

On the cusp of national fame, Qualls is planning to expand Whateverlife.com, which gets more visitors than Oprah.com. She wants to start a social network for the millions of teenage girls who flock to her Web site for free designs to decorate their MySpace pages.

Whateverlife.com generated a million dollars in revenue last year and is on track to do the same this year. Already, Qualls has turned down outside funding for her site and a verbal offer from someone willing to pay $5 million to buy her company.

"I'm stubborn, and I'm independent," she said from her pink office in the basement of her house. "I like the feeling that it's my company, and I want to have the say-so in everything."

But don't mistake Qualls for another smart but spoiled teenager. She is growing up fast but possesses instincts for life and business that elude many girls her age.

For now, she has turned down the idea of starring in a reality show because she fears the loss of privacy.

Early this month, she won her petition to be declared an adult, so she legally could sign business contracts and manage her own money. And she sounds like a 30-year-old when she talks about the struggle to balance work and personal time.

Qualls is not your typical teenager.

She hired her mother to be her business manager and pays three of her friends, all high school seniors, to work for her after school and on weekends. She said she is more interested in working on her Web site than in learning how to drive. And a year ago, Qualls bought a house in a new subdivision in Southgate, where she keeps three Himalayan cats and a Rottweiler named Thor.

"She's really creative," said best friend Bre Newby, a senior at Allen Park High, pointing out that Qualls was voted most likely to succeed in the eighth grade.

Despite a 3.9 grade point average, she dropped out of Lincoln Park High School after her sophomore year to work full-time on Whateverlife.com, a decision that she said shocked her family, friends and teachers. She now is studying to get her associate's degree in graphic design and a GED from Henry Ford Community College.

With her blonde highlights and vivacious personality, Qualls doesn't fit the stereotype of a computer geek. But she spent seven hours on her living room floor building a computer that she uses today.

And while other teenagers were playing sports and watching television, Qualls was teaching herself how to write HTML coding so she could build Web sites.

"I love it," she said. "You can create so many things. The possibilities are endless."

In December 2004, Qualls borrowed $8 from her mother to buy the Whateverlife.com domain name. She started the Web site as her personal graphics portfolio, intending to use it as a way to share her designs for MySpace pages with her friends.

But in the uncontrollable, fast-moving world of cyberspace, others began noticing Qualls' site even though she never has spent a dime on advertising. At the beginning of last year, Qualls received e-mails from people informing her that Carson Daly had mentioned the site on his radio show.

When it comes to Web traffic, Whateverlife.com currently ranks No. 825 out of 20.3 million Web sites, drawing 2.4 million visitors worldwide during the last 30 days, according to Quantcast, an Internet ratings service. Oprah.com is No. 997. Qualls said that on average, 72% of her site's audience makes a return visit.

In March, Qualls hired Lippitt, a former chief operating officer of ePrize, to help her grow her business. The biggest challenge facing Qualls, he said, is keeping her finger on the pulse of her audience as she gets older and her company expands.

"Ashley is a natural entrepreneur," he said. "I expected her to need a lot more direction and guidance than she actually needs. You only have to tell her anything once."

As Qualls gains more business experience, expect big changes at Whateverlife.com. The site can't afford to rest on its popularity because as soon as it releases a new MySpace page design, somebody immediately will copy it.

To expand its appeal, Qualls has added an online magazine for teenage girls and young women, a forum for visitors to chat, and a Web site builder with tutorials. In mid-October, she said she hopes to begin selling her designs for cell phone screens.

Qualls spends her days handling phone calls and business meetings with advertisers and Lippitt, reading the 300 to 400 e-mails she receives each day and coming up with new designs.

Unlike other young people who suddenly make an enormous amount of money, Qualls isn't rushing to spend it. Other than her house, she counts a Coach handbag and a $70 bottle of Giorgio Armani perfume as her two most expensive purchases.

Instead, Qualls is putting the profits she has generated back into her business, paying for computer server bills, programming work and her $200-an-hour business consultant. Growing up in a working-class family in Lincoln Park taught Qualls not to spend money foolishly.

"You never lose sight of the value of a dollar," she said.

Qualls has been relying on other companies to sell ads for her site. But if her trip to New York goes well, Whateverlife.com will sell ad space directly to advertisers.

That likely will mean adding a full-time salesperson and manager and setting up an office outside Qualls' home.

Lippitt will be on hand to help her in New York. Qualls said she is not afraid of speaking to a room full of adults, but she has never made a business presentation.

"I'm nervous doing this," she said. "It's my first time. It's a big learning experience."

The fledgling entrepreneur is still a teenager at heart. Qualls adorns her business card with lots of white hearts. She said she loves to hang out with her friends at the mall, listen to the Barenaked Ladies and play Sims 2.

And she said she still plans to attend Lincoln Park High's homecoming dance, prom and senior class trip. She doesn't have a boyfriend but said there are "special guys" in her life.

"I'm still the person that hangs out with her friends every weekend, and we're really goofy and just listen to songs all night and hang out," she said.

Qualls said she has thought about attending design school in New York, which she calls her "dream city."

But with the wisdom of an adult, she acknowledges that her life is changing too quickly for her to make any concrete plans.

"It's ever-changing every day," she said, her voice reflecting the awe she feels for what her Web site and her life have become. A Detroit teenager has turned her passion for designing MySpace layouts into a business that has generated more than $1 million in revenue.

Just 17 years old, Ashley Qualls, started her web site whateverlife.com two years ago with an initial investment of $8 from her mother, which she used to buy the domain name.

Whateverlife.com targets teenage girls and offers MySpace layouts, as well as a magazine section. Her site ranks well above other websites produced by large corporations that target teenage girls, such as Seventeen and Cosmo Girl, as you can see in this Alexa chart.

"Teenagers who go to the site want to stay connected. They look at me and think, she's my age, she must know what I like," Qualls told Crains Detroit Business.

Ashley's interest in MySpace layouts started in 2004 when she was 14, designing layouts for her friends. She then started posting her layouts on her web site.

By 2005 her traffic had gotten to the point where she needed a dedicated server. In order to finance the server, she decided to incorporate Google Adsense into her site. The first check she received was for $2,790.

In January 2006, she withdrew from school to focus on her website full time. In September 2006 she bought a two-story four-bedroom home for $250,000.

Qualls says the site now brings in between $40,000 to $70,000 per month, and up to 7 million unique visitors a month. She's even received an offer of $1.5 million for the site from someone acting on behalf of Internet entrpreneur Brad Greenspan. After she refused the offer, Greenspan's representative returned three months later with another offer of $700,000, a $100,000 car and an Internet show with a $2 million budget.

Qualls turned this offer down as well.

"I created this from nothing, and I want to see how far I can take it," Qualls told Fast Company.

"If I wanted to do an Internet show, I could do it on my own. I have the audience."

With an amazing business track record under her belt at the tender age of 17, and confidence to boot, I'm willing to bet that Qualls will be a name to watch ― for at least the next few decades.

Qualls' MySpace profile can be found here.

Young person makes good" stories are a staple of internet commerce coverage, but Fast Company has a better-than-usual example with 17 year old Ashley Qualls and her Whateverlife site.



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. Although Web-site rankings vary with the methodology, Quantcast, a popular source among advertisers, ranked Whateverlife.com a staggering No. 349 in mid-July out of more than 20 million sites. Among the sites in its rearview mirror: Britannica.com, AmericanIdol.com, FDA .gov, and CBS.com.

And one more, which Ashley can't quite believe herself: "I'm ahead of Oprah!" (Oprah.com: No. 469.)


She started by providing free MySpace layouts, as a hobby, when she was 14. She has since dropped out of school to run her growing business, and survived any number of family problems.

Dosh Dosh reckons she can do even better. The site has used her as a case study, providing hints that other budding entrepreneurs could use.

Fast Company has also done a multimedia slide show. Thanks to JD Lasica's Social Media blog for the link.