It is the year 2008, in case anyone was wondering it’s a time when domains are taking over the world, and anyone, no matter what their age can be successful. The case in point is Ashley Qualls. Here’s a situation where a 17 year old girl, started six months before her 16th birthday, made millions just by starting her own web domain, whateverlife.com. She quit going to high school to concentrate on her home business. Ashley joins a fraternity of people also populated by Dr. Kevin Ham, who is known as, “The Man Who Owns the Internet.” These two individuals are from different ends of the spectrum. Ashley is a high school dropout, and Dr. Kevin Ham is a medical doctor.

No matter what your education level, the internet is for everyone.  Opportunity is around every corner and if someone can come up with a specific idea, they in turn should be able to make their ideas a reality.  There are literally thousands of people in the world who have already jumped on the internet bandwagon. A good idea for a webpage can emit endless profits for the creator. The value of building your domain from the ground up can be priceless. Sure, there is plenty of competition, but in this world with the population growing more and more every 12 seconds, all it takes is one thought followed by hard work and action, and anyone could be an Ashley Qualls. Not taking anything away from her, she is one hard working 17 year old. It takes hard work dedication and hours and hours of trial and error. Neither of these people had a computer science background yet the both persevered and got their business’ booming.

These rags to riches stories are all over the world. These are just two people who had an idea and didn’t give any excuses. They got their initial domains and went for it. They didn’t lay around and cry about how they had no follow-through. They followed through and knocked the ball right out of the park. Dedication and hard work are the keys to their success.

Ashley Qualls, now 18, started out in 2004, at the age of 14, by borrowing eight dollars from her mom to start a website called whateverlife.com. Ashley provided free MySpace layouts and HTML tutorials for people her age, using advertising revenue to support the site. Whateverlife.com receives more traffic then Seventeen, Teen Vogue,and CosmoGirl‘s circulations combined.

A child coming from a divorced family, Ashley was living in a one bedroom apartment in Detroit, Michigan with her mom and sister, with visitation with her dad. By September 2004, Ashley had made enough money from her website to pay cash for a quarter million dollar home in a fenced-off subdivision. Ashley made the basement into her office where she does all her work.
 
The first check Ashley made from her website was for 2,500 dollars, and it just went up from there. The website now makes over one million dollars a year.  In March 2006, someone came to Ashley offering 1.5 million dollars to buy her out and she turned down the offer. A reality show was brought up to her, and because she did not want cameras following her around all the time she also refused that offer. Ashley's mom is her manager. She is paid 500 dollars a week for her services. Ashley also employs three of her friends from school.  Ashley taught them how to design for her website and now requires them to produce 25 designs a week minimum. Ashley has not fallen into the temptations of being rich she pays herself 3,000 dollars a month to live on and has made no major purchases other then her new home.

Unless you are really into internet news of the day, you would have no idea who Kevin Ham is.  Until recently, many of the internet savvy didn’t even know who he was!  A very shy person on the whole, Kevin Ham has only shown his aggressive nature through his hard work and persistence in learning every trick of the trade when it comes to mastering the internet.

Kevin Ham, who is only in his late 30’s, started out studying to be a doctor.  However, listening to friends during his college studies, he realized there was a whole new world out there called “the internet.” As he continued his studies in medical school, he spent every waking hour learning about the web, domain names, and how the whole process works.  He even learned to write his own software to work his way into the mainstream of buying domain names.  

As he started purchasing these domains at minimal costs of $7-$8 per name, and seeing that every time someone clicked on that name, or an associated link, someone was paying him for each one of those “hits.”   After realizing that he was making more money with his computer sideline than he could possibly make  being a new doctor, it seemed a “no brainer” to pursue the business of buying domains and watching them make money.  

In a matter of a few short years, Kevin Ham has gone from an unknown to being one of the wealthiest individuals in the computer industry.  Now owning several hundred thousands of domain names, and still buying them every day, he has built himself a $300 million enterprise, and still growing.  He will be one of the select few that end up “owning” the internet.

Who is flipping pizza? Chris Clark flipped pizza.com to the height of 2.6 million dollars.  That is a lot of pizza and pepperoni!  Pizza scents were odoriferous around the globe as the stories spread when another instant wealth event hit the air. Who is Chris Clark? Is he Kent Clark's little brother maybe? No Chris is an ex-software guy that developed a pretty cool pizza site. The site is amazing actually. You can check out pizza parlors around the world.  

Pizza dough for Chris was not instant. As told on a C Net News Blog Clark owned the dot.com for fourteen years.  He maintained the registration at a cost of twenty dollars per annum.  That is only two hundred eighty dollars.  What a return on investment! What warmed the oven for Clark to sell after that many years? With web real estate, being a hot commodity perhaps wasting another twenty ones was not necessary. Chatters are likening the World Wide Web to the Wild West and gold rush days. Apparently, a few saloon doors are swinging.   

Vodka was the topping that pushed Clark. When he learned vodka.com sold for seven million dollars. He decided pizza might have a shot.  Pizza.com went to the auction block for slicing, the rest is history; Mr. Clark is free to leave Smallville with two and a bit more than half slices in the pan. Of course, Uncle Sam might still need a slice.

How about a pitcher of ale with that last slice?

Chris Clark bought a domain name about 14 years ago. He has to pay twenty dollars a year to renew it, but he just sold pizza.com for 2.6 million dollars! Pizza.com has everything about pizza. You can find different pizza locations with just a zip code. There is pizza news, a random pizza game, a pizza survey, fun facts about pizza, a store, videos, and also a forum where you can talk about pizza!

There is a store on pizza.com where you can buy books, audio books, DVDs, magazines, and also food. The food is spices, crust mixes, bread sticks, pizza sauce, different flour mixes, and oils. They also sell special mixes that are gluten free, or organic.

You can search for pizza places in any country in the world. You can just put in the zip code, or an address where you are located, and the nearest pizza place will show up. A map shows up with all the pizza places around, and how far away they are.  

Some of the topics on pizza.com forum are events that are happening, recipes, restaurant reviews, coupons, job positions, and more. They also have a membership and user account where you can join. If you have a membership, you have access to other information as well as private emailing, images, and user group subscriptions. You can even throw out suggestion and critiques for pizza.com on its forum. There are some rules for the forum but mostly they are to have fun. Swearing, and foul language are not allowed, and also being disrespectful.

Clark auctioned his domain on Sedo.com, where there are over 11.5 million domain names for sale.