In 1990, Ashley Qualls was born in suburban Detroit. After her parents divorced, she and her younger sister were raised by their mother in a one-bedroom apartment.
At 14, Ashley started designing MySpace layouts for her high school friends. When her layouts grew more popular, she borrowed $8 from her mother to create a website named whateverlife.com.
Before long, she was publishing free MySpace layouts and HTML tutorials assisting teenagers with graphic design and programming. For a small fee, account users could post their projects on the web while earning points they could spend in a virtual mall.
Almost overnight, Ashley was flooded with advertisers. First, $2,500 then $5000, followed by $10,000.
Her first-month haul: $70,000.
Within a year, whateverlife.com was the go-to website for countless youngsters in the U.S. and around the world.
When massive, powerful Verizon Communications came aboard as an advertiser, Ashley's website grew still more popular and profitable.
By the age of 17, her website already had 7 million unique visitors a month and $1 million a year through ad revenue. According to Google Analytics, whateverlife.com was drawing more than 7 million individuals and 60 million page views a month.
In fact, it also was providing fierce competition to such sites as cbsnews.com and oprah.com.
Ashley quit school, used the basement of her home as an office, and employed her mother and friends from school.
Today she continues with her website, a writing career, and a company that provides graphic design and consulting services. In 2016, she founded SickNotDead.com, which provides resources for the chronically ill, and is the editor-in-chief of Lucky Soul; which helps fund charitable causes.
Of course, she's received lucrative offers to purchase whateverlife.com, but always turns them down.
Among her most memorable, however, is the one in 2006 that offered her $1.5 million and the choice of any car she desired. In declining the proposal, she added, "I don't even drive yet."