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"Whatever Life" you lead

Giving girls what they want

She has come along with the right idea at the right time. Eager to customize their MySpace profiles, girls cut and paste the HTML code for Whateverlife layouts featuring hearts, flowers, celebrities, and so on onto their personal page and-presto-a new look. Think of it as MySpace clothes; some kids change their layouts nearly as frequently. "It's all about giving girls what they want," Ashley says.

Ashley still hasn't spent a on advertising. It all started as a hobby. She began dabbling in website design eight years ago, when she was 9, the family's computer in the kitchen all day. When she wasn't playing games, she was teaching herself the basics of web design. For Ashley's 12th birthday, her mother splurged on an aboveground swimming pool "just so she'd go outside."

Stumbling into the business

Whateverlife just sort of happened, another accidental web business. Originally, Ashley created the site in late 2004 when she was 14 as a way to show off her design work. The name came to Ashley in a moment of frustration. After losing a video game, she dropped the controller and out, "Whatever, life." She thought it would be a great name for a website, for "whatever life you lead." It attracted (one long phrase) until she figured out how to customize MySpace pages. So many classmates asked her to design theirs that she began posting layouts on her site daily, several at first, then dozens.

By 2005, her traffic had exploded; she needed her own dedicated server. Ashley, who had bartered site designs for free web hosting, couldn't afford the monthly rental on her baby-sitting income. Her web host suggested Google AdSense, a service that supplies ads to a stie and shares the revenue.

Vocabulary Focus

presto(exclamation)--- said when something happens so quickly or easily that it seems to be magic

barter(v)--- to exchange goods for other things rather than for money

Specialized terms

HTML code(n phr) 超文本链接标示语言--- the abbreviation for hypertext markup language: a way of marking text so that it can be seen on the Internet

dedicated(adj) 专用的；专属的--- referring to something that is set apart from others of its kind for a special use

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