“What have you done for yourselves? Where are your websites and your brilliant ideas? Of course she was lucky. She was lucky that myspace came around. She was lucky that she understood it. She was lucky to have access to a computer. But, she made her own luck by creating the layouts. How many of you even have a blog? What are you doing to try to help people? Where are you putting your passion? ”

SOME of us have worked longer and harder on our passions than Ashley (in my case, more than half her young lifetime) and have little or nothing to show for it.

“It’s not a get rich quick deal. You’ve got to work at it,”

Yeah, but Ashley got her first monthly check (2700 bucks, the next one 5 grand, the next one ten thousand) only a few months after she started her website. She got rich quick.

“Ashley deserves every penny that her space creates for her. It’s her money!”

No one denies that. And DON’T get me wrong, I dont begrudge Ashley her success. I just wish that kind of success would come my way for once in my life.

“She made it, and no-one has a right to put her down because of it!”

Actually, we do have the right

Thomas, thanks for a great story. I’m writing a post about internet scams, and wanted to use Ashley’s story as a counterpoint to sites that just try to scam people.

I find it distressing that a Judge has stepped in to appoint a conservator over her money. What prompted the court to do this? Was it the magazine article or some nosy trouble maker who doesn’t think that a 17 year old girl has any business making this kind of money.

Speaking of which… I’m sure that there was a bit of luck to Ashley’s success, but you’ve got to give her some credit. She began her website because she had a passion and a talent for creating myspace layouts that other people seemed to like. Every time someone uses one of her layouts there is a link back to her website. Get enough layouts out there on myspace and you don’t need to be high on Google or Yahoo to drive traffic.

For the past six months I’ve been studying web marketing like crazy. I would love to be able to make a living off of the web, but I can tell you there are three things that I’ve learned about web marketing.
1. It’s not a get rich quick deal. You’ve got to work at it, and Ashley does.
2. A little bit of Vision goes a long way. Ashley began early and saw that others would want to have their myspace pages customized. She capitalized on that little bit of vision to great success.
3. The people who are making the most money on the internet didn’t set out to make money. They set out to help people. Ashley seems to have done just that.

As to her layouts not being the best… Well, MacDonald’s doesn’t make the best hamburgers either, but they sure do sell a lot more than most other hamburger stands.

As for as her education goes, this girl is never going to work for anyone else a day in her life. She was smart enough to figure out myspace. When the myspace thing isn’t working anymore I’ll bet good money that she’ll have already spotted the next trend and be helping people figure that one out. If you look her up in 10 years I’d also be willing to bet that she’ll have much more of an education than most of you yahoos putting her down because of dropping out of school. What have you done for yourselves? Where are your websites and your brilliant ideas? Of course she was lucky. She was lucky that myspace came around. She was lucky that she understood it. She was lucky to have access to a computer. But, she made her own luck by creating the layouts. How many of you even have a blog? What are you doing to try to help people? Where are you putting your passion?

Ashley deserves every penny that her space creates for her. It’s her money! She made it, and no-one has a right to put her down because of it!

I’m curious where you got the idea that Adsense had a cap. According to John Chow (johnchow.com) the guy who runs plenty of fish makes over $240,000 a month through Adsense. I don’t think that there is a cap.

I must say that I found out that while Ashley’s site is indeed bringing in alot of visits/hits, out of all the websites out there that offer free myspace layouts, hers is not on top. Hers is not the most favored one. There are quite a few that get more hits than hers. She just managed to get enough hits to earn the money she does. Quite a few freebie myspace layout sites get many more hits than hers. Ashley and her site. and the money she earned, got alot of attention because of her young age.