Cameron Johnson – a Great Entrepreneur Since He Was 9

A Brief History Of The Young Entrepreneur

Posted by Entrepreneur Writer

When he was just 9, Cameron Johnson from Virginia started his first business venture. Everything began by way of a joke, the young man started making greeting cards for his family’s celebrations. Many of the recipients liked the beautiful cards, and soon the little boy started receiving orders from friends and colleagues of the family. After a couple of years Cameron started to use the money earned from his business to buy Ty Beanie Babies at wholesale prices from the manufacturers. He made himself a website and started selling the dolls there and on eBay. This way, while his friends were playing children’s games, Cameron made his first 50 000 dollars. He was only 12 years old by that time.

When the kid entrepreneur was 13, he began working on anothergreat business idea – “My EZ Mail” – a service that forwards e-mails to a specific account without showing information about the recipients. He hired a coder to develop the idea and in a couple of years his new venture was generating about 3 000 dollars in revenue monthly from advertisers.

In 1997, Cameron with two other teenage entrepreneurs founded an advertising company – Surfingprizes.com. They were showing ads on the top of web browsers and paid 0.2 dollars per hour everyone who was showing the advertisements on his or her computer. The people who managed to attract new advertisers for the company, received 10 percent from new user’s revenue. The kids had the place for ads, but wanted more advertisers. They started partnering with some big names Advertising.com and DoubleClick, which could easily sell the ads to their clients. These companies collected only 30% of the revenue, while the remaining 70% was for the kids. At the age of 15, Cameron began receiving checks of 300 000 dollars monthly, pretty well for a kid J. At 19, his assets were worth more than a million dollars.

After high school Johnson went to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he stayed less than a semester. He was seized again by the business spirit and with a friend of his started a new venture – CertificateSwap.com . The so called gift certificates can be used to purchase anything on eBay. Usually someone can sell his or her certificate on the Bay, but at the price of 13 % of the certificate value. Cameron’s new site charged only 7.5 % for the same deal. In 2004 Cameron and company sold this business for a six digits amount.

Cameron Johnson was born in Virginia, on the 13^th of November 1984. He started with business at just 9 and before he graduated from high school, he was one of the most successful teenage entrepreneurs in the world. Now 26, Johnson is an author of several books, famous businessman and lecturer.