Fawkes the Firefox and the Million Dollar Homepage guy (Photo credit: remisser)

With the rise of the online world, there are those individuals who have managed to capitalize on all the opportunities it brings to make their fortunes. Whether you sell Ford Mustang parts and classic Mustang parts, your own artwork or run a blog, you can learn from the lessons of these successful online entrepreneurs and apply them to your business.

Check out these unlikely success stories of online business.

Ashley Qualls and Whateverlife.com

Most teen entrepreneurs don’t look beyond making a few extra dollars mowing lawns or selling lemonade. Ashley Qualls took teen entrepreneurship to a whole new level, setting up a website to provide MySpace layouts to her peers.

Working from home, she built her website to a million dollar business, drawing more traffic than many teen magazine websites. Not bad at all for someone who was still in high school! Qualls’ success came from understanding her market — after all, she was one of them. Her savvy business sense and hard work definitely paid off.

Alex Tew and the Million Dollar Homepage

This idea was so simple and yet so brilliant, that people the world over were kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.

Alex Tew was a student in England and wanted a million dollars. He set up a simple website called The Million Dollar Hompage which contained 1 million pixels, arranged in a grid of 1,000 pixels by 1,000 pixels.

His master plan: sell advertising space at a cost of $1 per pixel in lots of 10 pixels x 10 pixels. The website went live on the 26th of August, 2005, and by the 1st of January 2006, only 1,000 pixels were left.

He sold these off on eBay for $38,100, meaning that his simple website ended up getting him $1,037100. He didn’t make a million dollars, he made tens of thousands more!

Few played the publicity game very well, coming up with a unique idea that would appeal to all kinds of media. The more popular his website became, the more people bought advertising, and the more publicity he got.

Amanda Hocking and her Novels

Most people who want to achieve literary success will try the traditional publishing route, selling their novel to a publishing house and hoping people buy their books in stores. Amanda Hocking went a different route, self-publishing her books and selling them online through Amazon.

In November 2011 she sold her 1 millionth book — all digital, with no physical copies in existence. In just 18 months she made $2 million dollars in sales. Hocking had tried the traditional publishing route as a teenager, but publishers never took her on. Rather than give up, she followed her dreams.

This guest post brought to you by James who enjoys blogging about everything from making money online to the best place to find CJ Pony Parts Ford Mustang parts.