A Tech Empire That Started With A Simple Blog

Taj Pabari started his first business when he was 11 years old. By age 14, he was running a profitable company Fiftysix Creations, and he now has employees in six countries. He describes how he started.

I got my first computer when I was 11-years-old. I would be on my computer, playing a lot of games and on the internet in class. I couldn’t talk about anything else. One day I thought, ‘Why don’t I just channel this passion into something I also love doing, which is creative writing?’

I started a blog that was for kids by kids, so they could learn about the world of technology. It was 2011, and at the time it seemed like we were the only blog focusing on tech reviews exclusively for the kids market. We put some ads on it and that’s how we first started making money. Every time someone clicked, we got paid. 

A few months in, we were getting 100,000 hits a day, making $10 a day. I guess the conversion rates weren’t too good, but I could go to the tuck shop every single day. It was my first taste of entrepreneurship. 

A few more months in, I knew I couldn’t run the blog by myself, so I talked to a couple of fellow ‘nerds’ in my class. I said, ‘I’m making $10 a day on this website. If you write, say, three articles a day, I’ll give you $3 out of my $10’. Then I was making around $7 a day and all the writing was being delegated. 

We found that other young people all around the world – not just my friends – were also interested in writing on this website for free. All they wanted was recognition for their work. 

Six months into the business, it was completely profitable. We weren’t paying anything for the domain, because it was still a ‘blogspot url’. Other children were writing for the website and our advertising revenue was steadily rising. I thought, ‘This is very cool! This is how the world works. If I can identify and channel my passion into something I can monetise and that’s meaningful, I’m going to live a special life’.

Enrol in startup.business today to receive a copy of the comic book Brilliant BusinessKids, which features the complete story about how Taj started and grew Fiftysix Creations.