Cameron Johnson: The Millionaire who Began Business at 5
Cameron Johnson’s story is a motivational nugget that’s sure to impress. He showed entrepreneurial instincts from a very early age, and all signs pointed towards him making it big in the future. When he was 5, he started selling vegetables to his neighbors. He launched his first business called Cheers and Tears, a greeting card company in 1994, when he was just 9, from his home and by 12, he was making more than $50,000-a-year.
Trading popular business at the time Ty Beanie Babies on e-bay, Johnson earned 10 times the amount he bought them. A young Johnson – who was barely into his teens – saw potential, and turned this into a legitimate business by purchasing dolls at wholesale from Ty and selling them on eBay as well as his Cheers and Tears website.
Johnson then used $50,000 as seed money to kick-start his next venture called My EZ Mail, a confidential email forwarding service. Within months, MY EZ Mail was making Johnson $3000 in advertising revenue.
His next project was called Surfingprizes.com, an advertisement service that put scrolling advertising on top of web browsers. Two things were particularly interesting about this service: (1) users of Surfingprizes.com received 20 cents per-hour to have the ads displayed on their screen, and (2) referral marketing was used to spread the word; users would get 10% of the revenue generated by each customer they referred to use the service.
15-year-old Johnson by this time was making as much as $400,000 per month, and worth more than $1 million before high school graduation. Johnson
In college, he started a Certificate Swap Company which he later sold for a ‘six-figure amount’.
Today at 33, Johnson’s entrepreneurial savvy, well-oiled by a strong sense of purpose and direction has earned him a place in the big league with a net worth of millions of dollars.
