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Paris Spence-Lang – 12 Year Old Google Whore

written by John Chow on February 10th, 2007

pairs.jpg

It seems the Vancouver Sun newspaper is on a Dot Com kick of late. After profiling me last Wednesday, they’ve gone and wrote a story about 12 year old Paris Spence-Lang, a grade 7 student with a financial advice blog call FunnyMunny.ca.

Now, most 12 year old probably have better things to do than blog about financial advice but Paris is one of those rare gifted kids. “I always thought it was fun to decide what to do with my money, but it’s hard to do when you don’t have a lot of it, because I’m just a kid,” Spence-Lang told the Vancouver Sun.

FunnyMunny offers financial advice for other kids of Paris’ age. The advice range from how to negotiate a better allowance using a Power-Point presentation to why you should never set up a lemonade stand. There is even a post on how to make a killing off a blog! Paris admits that’s one of the reasons he started his blog.

A big reason that I started my blog is because my mom told me that people make revenue off of them. I still wasn’t sure about it, but then she said that some people actually live off of the revenue they’re making! Not to mention compiling their articles into books and who knows what that can lead to!

You gotta love this kid! :D

To monetize his blog, Paris has installed Google AdSense. However, he needs some help with the optimization – their current placements won’t do him much good. FunnyMunny is hosted by Blogspot but on January 18, Paris got a $12 a week raise in his allowance and registered the name funnymunny.ca. The domain is set up incorrectly however. Every link on the blog redirects to funnymunny.ca. To Google, this is just one big page. You need to fix that Paris, or you won’t be getting much search traffic from Google.

Check out FunnyMunny.ca and see the financial world through the eyes of a very smart 12 year old. After reading it, I’m glad I never set up any lemonade stands!

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  1. RockyBalboa

    We should all support and help this kid.

  2. Looks like a John Chow in the making. All he needs to do now is take a trip to China and get into a rock fight with some baby pandas.

    • No, he doesn’t need a trip to China to get into a rock fight with Panda.:-) What he need is to knock Master Chow’s door every morning to do the wax on wax off routine (not the naughty hand version though:-)), and he will beat John before his 20th birthday.

  3. Looks like the kid needs some help monetizing his site John. Why don’t you help him out? or better yet, just wait a year and tell him to sign him up for agloco (which is down as of 6:35p PST right now)

  4. Hehe, this kid writes some pretty good articles, interesting. The lemonade stand article is hilarious. Rub your mom’s back for money!

  5. syl

    Wow, I really admire that kid. He has a good and early start.

  6. Uh oh, is this the kinda stuff you did when you were 12 John?

  7. Is it really necessary to call a 12-year old a whore John? Evil bastard.

  8. Never thought i’d be learning a thing or two from a 12-year-old, haha :)

  9. Shawn Knight

    If I had only been this successful at such a young age! I’m twice his age and he is probably more successful than me! lol

  10. John,

    The blog that wrote a review for your blog in the most recent batch is also a young problogger.The blog is called Techzi and he is only like 12 aswell. In fact, he was featured in one of the articles by darren over at problogger.

  11. “I can make that much money in 10 minutes by rubbing my mom’s back!”

    Anyone else find that a bit creepy? Perhaps John’s title has a deeper meaning.

  12. I wish I had half of the motivation this kid has and I’m 22.

    It is really impressive what this kid is doing at age 12, but I do agree with John that he needs to optimize his ads.

  13. wow man, that is great, he is really smart

  14. Funny… if you look closely at the link for this story on the sidebar, it looks like the title is “old google whore”

  15. Guk

    What a smart kid…his english is way better than most bloggers out there.

  16. Great find John. I enjoyed it a lot :) I’ve pitched and wrote him up on my blog.

  17. Is he the youngest Dot Com Mogul in the Web? :D

  18. Don’t under estimate us 12 year olds now…
    I myself I’m only 12 and I run a blog!

  19. Yeah. :) Thanks for pointing it out Paul. ;) I too am a 12-year old blogger, but rather than maintain a financial blog, I focus on technology, gadget, photography, entrepreneurship, gaming & geeky goodness. :D

    Not that I’m out to crash the party or anything. ;)

    Here’s the ProBlogger article: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.problogger.net%2Farchives%2F2007%2F01%2F04%2Fintroducing-12-year-old-problogger-david-wilkinson%2F&ei=AzTPRY64DaH8wAGx9YTmAQ&usg=__Fmia3ij7lAwkN3736UzsEx0m44U=&sig2=YC8_LY64SHe2AZerx8eINg

    And here’s my website: http://www.techzi.net/

    Great to see someone else my age making their presence known. :) I knew I wasn’t the only one!

  20. Nice to read, he’s a smart kid, but I think it’s mainly nice to read because you know he’s pretty young, besides that I must confess I found it quite boring ;)

  21. You said he needed to fix his adplacement, I didn’t find any adds, might be what you ment :)

  22. Thats cool. I was a crazy entrepreneur when I was a teenager, never made much. Still am, still don’t make much. :-)

    • I was 12 too! I used to be a crazy entrepreneur like u said..I used to sell table lamps made using wood and PVC pipes, sell my homework writing skills, sell my rare WWF posters for a ransom! sell sim cards. . .made some, spent some more…that kid is talking about savings, that is interesting and that lemonade stand story…He is not a prodigy or something, but then he is smart, but then all 12yr olds these days are!

  23. Hello,
    This is Michael Mathews (CTO) the reason that all the links stay at funnymunny.ca is because the website domain is set up with a “domain mask” because it is hosted with blogger. This problem is for with our site funnymunny.ca but with the domain mask hosting.

    I am working on this problem just to let you all know.

  24. I don’t know about this… it’s probably just his dad using this as a link-baiting opportunity. Heh, realistically, how much could a 12 year old know about investing without his dad’s constant help?

  25. There’s better things to do than try to make money when you’re 12.

  26. I still have a hard time believing that he is writing these alone. But rather than “hate”, I plan to read his posts regularly to form a better opinion. Definitely better than a lemonade stand or mowing lawns, both of which I did as a young lad. Keep it up, Paris.

  27. Interesting comments. I am Paris’s mom. Yes, he absolutely writes these posts by himself. There is nobody helping him, except for the books he reads to get ideas and learn from. However…. I have complete access to his blog and his emails (as should every parent) and I sometimes replace a “i” with an “I” and a “there” with a “their,” but it is his blog, his sentences, and his words. I once had to delete an entire post because he included competitive information about his mentor’s business. But truly, this is all coming from him.

    For the record, Paris has lots of interests outside money, just like other kids.

    Thanks for all the interest in the blog. The boys are having fun with everything that has happened from the article. And John, thank you for your offer to help the boys. They are still learning how to do all this and they appreciate your support.

Trackbacks

  1. » What Did You Want To Be When You Were 12? - February 10, 2007 at 8:23 pm
  2. Steve’s Best of the Internet for Feb 11th 2007 | steve-olson.com - February 11, 2007 at 1:09 pm
  3. This Make$ Me Laugh: Finances Are So Easy A 12-Year-Old Could Do It! | Punny Money - February 13, 2007 at 7:32 pm
  4. 5 lessons I have learned from John Chow at Personal Development with The Positivity Blog - February 27, 2007 at 3:05 pm