Главная страница «Первого сентября»Главная страница журнала «Английский язык»Содержание №10/2008

Youth Get Big Business

It is already settled that the World Wide Web can be a Klondike, and even school students can earn enormous profit from it.

Hearts and Tags
One day an American student Ashley Coals borrowed $8 from her mum’s budget and created her own website. She let the public judge her exclusive creations. Surfing to the page whateverlife.com you can easily download tender confessions such as “I love you” presented in more than a hundred ways! The phrases “You are the best guy in the world” or “Thank you for having a nice day” are ordinary, because there are hundreds of every-day phrases directed to any occasion. All of the passages are equipped with an animated postcard which is free to choose. You can also express yourself and create your own quote banners using the special program with layouts, tags, pictures, glitters and other stuff – everything is on the site!
The popularity of this webpage rose day to day and there were more and more customers clicking on Ashley’s page. As a result advertisers had been attracted by the unusual source and the “machine” started to make money. The first cheque cashed for about $2700, the second time, it reached $5000, the third time it rocketed to $10,000. The person most surprised was Ashley’s mother, who never thought naive hearts and flower borders, called authentic work, could bring a real income! Her daughter celebrated her 17th birthday, when the clicks reached hundreds of thousands a day! Whateverlife.com snapped into action and made $1 million net profit in a year! Not so long ago Ashley bought a new house. The head office is located on its ground floor. She hired her mother and some of her friends to work for her. This is an example of how it is possible for original ideas to mold big business from a modest starting point.

About Loneliness and Friends
Catherine Cook, 17, has also become a millionaire without even finishing school. She met the interest of thousands of students of the same age to communicate anonymously on net-sites. Catherine is a founder of the teen site myYearbook.com. Having clicked on this link you can enter the community to make new relationships, to chat with class-mates, read a star’s news boards and comment upon them, store your own videos and photo albums. Good attendance estimated at 3 million persons a month has made a great deal. The profits coming from ad banners are reaching millions of dollars! The conception of the site appeared in Catherine’s mind when she moved to another city; there were no old friends and she decided to search, for some using the Internet. When the site was at the very beginning, it was known only to the customers of the same town, but little time passed before many students from all over the country started making friends there. It is necessary to mention that Catherine invested a huge sum of money sponsored by her elder brother, so the lag between the first step and coming success was short. New headings of the internet-community were worked out with the help of the girl’s classmates. There appeared contests where the costumers competed for the name of the best photographer or clip maker, or the best storyteller. Now Catherine’s “empire” is about 30 mates working together to sustain the original project.

About Pixels and Luck
Logical thinking is not always helpful when you try to understand the mechanism of internet procurement. The case of Alex Tue easily proves that! The English student has created a unique milliondollarhomepage.com – all of the most curious ads combined together on the 100 pixels grid! He filled the homepage with 10 thousand squares 100 x 100 pixels each (1 pixel looks like a single ball-point dot)! Alex tried to take his chance and suggested that anyone who wants to be advertised should buy 1 pixel for one dollar, the price of one square equalling 100 dollars. The news about the staggering event quickly spread all over the net. Only after 4 days the first customer bought 4 squares! That day Alex signed in his diary: “Today I have got my easiest money ever!”
The milliondollarhomepage.com had been hit several thousand times for 3 months, and the majority of visitors had made a buy! As a result Alex made $250,000.
It is hard to define why this happy thought got into full swing. The speech addressed to customers was about the need to pay for education. This boy was lucky having been heard, because at that moment his squares were still selling! The young man is very thankful for life has given him such luck and he doesn’t mind copying of his invention by anyone else.

Translated from Arguments and Facts “The History of Success”

By M. Goryatcheva