I love hearing stories of of young entrepreneurs and so today when I came across 12 year old ProBlogger David Wilkinson whose Web 2.0 blog is Techzi I was over the moon.
Here’s a young guy who has recruited a couple of friends (one is 12, the other is 11) to help him write his blog and who in a recent interview at Repliqa answered the question of ‘Are you making any money blogging?‘ with:
“Yes, quite a bit actually. I could definitely live off $500 a month until I turn 14, by which time I aim to be earning more, by experimenting in Internet Marketing.”
David and his co-bloggers are currently running a fundraiser to raise enough money to transfer his blog from Blogspot to a hosted WordPress blog and he’s already over the $1200 mark (make a donation below).
David was recently featured on the BBC and sounds like he’s becoming quite the local celebrity.
What I love about his blog is his style of writing. He’s actually a great writer (you’d never know he was 12 most of the time) and that he writes with an authentic voice, humor and having done some good research. While he’s only been blogging for 6 months he does at a standard that is as good (if not better) than a lot of more experienced bloggers twice (or thrice) his age.
I’m looking forward to watching David’s blogging in 2007.
Interesting – nothing against a fundraiser but if you’re earning $500 per month why on earth do you need to raise money to host? I pay a tenth of that per month and you can pay a lot less.
Very nice to see! After reading some of his posts, I’m amazed at how talented he is. Expect to see great things from this boy in the future!
You don’t think this seems a little suspicious? His writing seems awfully good. If its all legit power to ya bud!
I started when I was 10 (18 now, running my own Blog Design company) so this makes me smile quite a bit!
[…] David Wilkinson is only 12 years old and manages to pack in $500 a month from his tech blog, Techzi. I read about this story first on ProBlogger, a daily read of mine, who reported an interview of the young blogger at Repliqua. […]
I chipped in a few bucks, just in the spirit of good will. For all I know, his dad could be running the site in his name. However, I one day (soon) plan on helping my beautiful young daughter sell her artwork to raise money for charity, so I figured I’d put some money in the karma bank…
Shoot, if he really is a 12 year old kid then HATS OFF to him / them. If it is his dad, still gets points for originality I guess.
Threw in a few bucks for karma, and I wouldn’t mind hosting that site for free on my shared server… though I don’t want to make that offer cuz I want to see how high that donations actually get :-)
Good luck to you, young blogger dude. I wish I started when I was 12… I might pwn the web by now. Who knows, you could be the next big thing!
Just when I was proud of my blog you had to knock me down a few pegs. :) The site is really remarkable, and I agree with Diane’s skepticism, but if the site is legit that kid has a bright future. How many 12 year olds are following the tech industry, let alone writing coherently about it?
Well, I figure by the time the kid reaches college or his senior year in high school, the 12 year old will be the “King of Blogsphere”, while Darren follows closely behind! But, not bad being 12 and a PROBLOGGER, makes some sniffle’s of why didn’t we know about blogging when we were 12?
I’m one who’s never enjoyed hearing those “kids do” stories. Quite honestly I won’t be visiting or supporting his endeavors until he’s out of college.
A kid should be doing his homework and having fun outside.
If he is for real, thats freakin crazy! Not sure what I was doing at 12, mostly running around getting sunburnt and playing stupid games. Mind you, kids today are mostly pretty tech savvy I guess. Next we’ll be hearing about the 5 yr old bloggers – live blog reports from their PDA on how their primary school teacher is yelling at them!
Matt
I can’t for the life of me imagine why he’d need $1200 to run a website, even the most professional of websites. And rather than being impressed by people giving him $500 (twice!) in cash, it kind of bugs me. It smells a little scam-y to me, frankly. Even if he’s not outright scamming anyone, that is, it’s still begging for money that he doesn’t need for any legitimate purpose.
And boy are those snap popups on the site annoying!
Debra, I noticed this too. If he’s so tech savvy… shouldn’t he realize that he doesn’t need to physically buy a server to run a tech blog?
Darren,
I dont think he needs $5000 pay for a server,let alone host a blog on a personal domain.I hope he is the real deal, atleast for the sake of those who donated money.His writing style does seem a bit out of his age group but your have to mind the fact that its a new generation.Anyways,I hope everything works out for him.
Well, good for him! I wish I started blogging when I was 12. I played around with starting a business when I was around 11 or 12, but I never made any money! Now I’m 18, and I still haven’t made any money. Oh well. I should ask him for some pointers. ;)
I’m with some of the other commenters: why the heck does he need to raise money for a host? I pay pratically nothing for my site hosting, and it can take thousands of visitors a day…what a scam!
Wow, I just got my Adsense to $100 for the first time and I am stoked. Will pay for hosting. Darren, what would you need $5000 for?
Molly
Wow… first Yuvi, now this kid? The blogosphere has just been conspiring this week to make me feel like my blogging achievements as a 17 year old are subpar. -___-
This kid is like the doogie howser of blogging. Still I don’t know… if it looks like doo-doo and smells like doo-doo….
I’m with Andy on that. I make about that much a year! :D
Well the kid beat me.
Haha, he’s beating me too. Good for him. I first started with websites around his age, but didn’t make a dime on it till about 3 years later… and it wasn’t much at that.
Lol! Well, if it is genuine, then my hat goes off to him well and truly! My 14 year old spend hours on the bloomin PC if she learn’t how to blog it would save me a fortune in pocket money! I am gonna send her on over!
[…] If you haven’t already read the backstory at ProBlogger, David Wilkinson is a twelve year old tech blogger. His Blogger blog, Techzi, is currently hosted for free at http://www.tech.co.nr/ and http://globa-tech.blogspot.com/. Both versions have no Pagerank, and the first version is ranked 837,544 on Alexa, while the second is 281,840. Along with his two friends, it looks like they keep the blog updated on a pretty regular basis. Here’s the fun part of the story… […]
this all smells like a well planned stunt… his writing is so not 12 year old like. At least that is what my intuition tells me.
For goodness sake… I’m 12 and I do write the stuff myself! I’ve been on BBC Radio twice because of it… Once national, once local. Just check this out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs/2006/12/generation_next_a_12yearold_bl.shtml
and…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2006/12/14/child_blogger_feature.shtml
In the first interview I talked in-depth about the effects of Web 2.0 on air. How the hell do you not believe me? Argh! My Dad doesn’t even know what Web 2.0 is. Suggesting he wrote it is… ridiculous!
But yeah… How the hell did I get on ProBlogger? O_o
This is cool stuff.
Don’t let them get to you David – unfortunately the blogosphere can be a pretty suspicious place at times and unforutnately it needs to be sometimes too because there can be some pretty dubious people out there.
I think your story checks out – I’ve heard from quite a few people who either know of or know you today, that with the bbc stories and a long read through your archives and I think you’re not only 12 but you’re a pretty smart guy.
nice work mate.
I’ve know David from a few months back and got him into Profy.com for a blogging stint. He is quite talented for his age. He plans to get into the Guiness Books next year
[…] Wow. What a shocker. My good friend David Wilkinson aka Delta has been highlighted on of all the sites at Problogger.net, the site of Darren Rowse, my boss at b5media.com […]
That’s still pending their ‘finalised confirmation’. It passed their ‘preliminary checks’ and ‘editors check’. But it’s not done yet. =D
I can hope though.
[…] Senior ProBlogger Darren Rowse berichtet heute über David Wilkinson, einen 12jährigen Blogger aus – woher sonst – den Staaten. […]
I know he is going to have an hard time… I started my first website (not blog) when I was 14 and it got quite popular, but when someone found i was only 14 years old there were a lot of commenting on the other competing websites that I shouldn’t run a website, I wasn’t mature enough to run a forum, etc etc…
Kudos to you David, you are on the right path, I just don’t think you need $5000 for a server, I mean for $8 a month you can get 20GB of space and 400GB of bandwith and you can even host 20 websites on an account, that’s pocket money compared to the $500 you are making every month wich is pretty impressive for a recent blog by the way ;)
I think everyone mis-understands where I get my income from. I get very little from Tech.co.nr, but almost all of it for writing for various other blogs. Profy.com is my main employer.
And can anybody recommend any hosts to m? I’ve been looking at Kiosk.ws and MediaTemple.com
Both seem rather good, and have been recommended by friends.
You skeptics are spoiling my party. Google David and you will see pics of him being interviewed on the BBC.
Also, he is not spending his cash simply for hosting but also for design, wordpress, and some other junk.
I’m currently using Reseller Zoom (www.resellerzoom.com) because they have some great plans in UK based servers but I think they also sell hosting at hostingzoom.com or something.
Grr, I’m only 13. I never got on the index of problogger.net
I sold my site http://www.wmseo.com for an undisclosed amount. I’ve read that guys blog. Personally I think my writing is more advance seeing as he’s only 1 year younger.
I am Svetlana Gladkova, Editor in Chief at http://www.profy.com – David’s main employer (as David puts it). I am really impressed about David mentioned here. David is one of the first authors of Profy – and one of the best ones at that. I think we are really lucky to have him with us. And I never doubted David’s age – sometimes he simply behaves quite childish, but he is a fast learner. I think it’s one of the reasons of his success. And I am totally sure David will really be one of the biggest issues in the blogosphere – quite soon.
Some people just can’t handle it when other people get press or notoriety… kudos to the kid and to think things can only go up! Don’t hate the playa!
I love how he’s defending everything about his character, but doesn’t defend the reason he wants $5,000 when alot of people are saying that a couple hundred a year will get you some great hosting.
Sure there’s a BBC article, but how much does his dad or mother help in the background (off the air)?
People should hang on to their money cause I’m not convinced that he needs this much.
So he’s 12, so what? That doesn’t make him not able to do cool things. Some 12 year olds need help with lots of stuff, some can do neat things by themselves, and very well. If he was a kick-ass 12 year old soccer player, no one would blink.
The only thing that gives me pause is him fund-raising 5 grand for a server. And that’s not cause he’s a kid, but because I think it’s not such as great idea. Then again, now that I scroll back, I realize that figure is not in Darren’s original post, but in a comment.
What Darren actually said is that the kid fund-raising so that he can get a hosted WP blog, and he’s at $1200 already. That should be more than enough to pre-pay for quite awhile. Maybe with the left over amount, he can give a bit to his helpers, or get them a neat little gift, like a gaming console.
David came here and said that his $500 a month is earning from his writing for other sites. The kid’s clever, like a true capitalist, he’s looking for someone else’s funds to finance his expansion.
If I had any advice to give him, it would be to take his age off his site logo because soon enough he’ll turn 13, then 14, etc. He can go ahead and put it in a tag line.
Gore Vidal said: “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” And looking at some of the tear-down slap-down comments here, it’s oh so true. You go, kid, and don’t look back!
[…] David Wilkinson: 12 Jahre alt, Blogger, 500 $ Einkommen im Monat durch Blogposting – Tech.co.nr (gefunden bei ProBlogger). Yuvi Panda: 15 Jahre alt; Blogger, Programmierer (gefunden bei Scobleizer) […]
Oh the envy, now everybody’s trying to either steal the show (because they think they’ve got something better to offer), or jump bring the poor boy down (because they’re sure they haven’t got something better to offer).
Allen.H
Thanks for the hint about the hosting Eduardo. They look pretty cool.
Thanks for the encouragement Jim!
Looks like you have a young prodigy there, Darren. Nicely done, David. Ignore the biting comments. I wrote my own magazine and had my own ‘publishing’ business when I was seven (my classmates actually bought subscriptions, haha). People are suspicious of things they can’t understand. Keep up the great work. I’m sure you’ll be an astounding success.
=^..^=
Good luck, David. I think you’re doing quite well with your current resources, and I’m really interested to see how you’ll handle $5,000. It sounds like you have some good ideas on how to use it – hosting, template work, prizes.
Too often people underestimate kids. Way to prove them wrong.
I think the first business I ran was when I was around 12. It involved buying cheap cooking chocolate for about 20p, then melting it and pouring it into molds (old advent calendars). We would then sell these tiny chocolates for 5p each.
I don’t think age is too relevant in this case. I run a Scout troop (10 – 14 year olds), and there are a lot of smart kids out there that don’t realise just how much potential they have. Good on you, David!
Thanks Jennifer! And Phil. It’s nice to hear your stories on what you did in your childhood. I know some of my friends go round doing some pretty odd things.
The rest of them deliver newspapers. And then there’s odd-boy David who earns a living sleeping…
I love to see stories like this. FYI.. he can go to the following address and buy web space for a fraction of his proposed $5000. I have used it for a while now and it works great.
http://webhostingbuzz.com/hosting/shared.html