Teenager Launches e-Business

Norman's Jeff Hughes, 15, operates OklahomaTeen.com, which offers news, movie listing, music videos, and more.

By Jim Stafford

    There is still a week left in the summer of 2005, but "winter hours" already in effect for the Norman-based Internet business, OklahomaTeen.com

    A call placed to the OklahomaTeen.com business line at noon on a Monday, for example, will be answered by a recorded voice that informs callers the "winter hours are Monday through Friday, 3:15 to 9 p.m., Saturday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m."

    The hours may seem slightly off-kilter for an ambitious Oklahoma-based business, but they are perfect for the 15-year-old high school sophomore that is Jeff Hughes, the founder and chief executive officer of OklahomaTeen LLC.

    School started last week at Norman's Community Christian School, so winter hours went into effect for OklahomaTeen.com. Hughes operates the Web site out of his bedroom in the home of his Parents, Phil and Debbie Hughes.

    OklahomaTeen.com is no lemonade stand, however.

    Hughes developed a business plan for the site, designed it himself using the Web software Front Page and has sold advertising to a half dozen high-profile Oklahoma businesses. He began working on the site about a year ago, actually launching it about six months ago.

    "I've always really been into sports and wanted to start a football team or basketball team," Hughes said recently in an after-school conversation. "Something cool, and I wanted to manage it myself. All of my ideas were a little unrealistic."

    Hughes' father pitched the idea to him of creating a business that targets teenagers.

    "He had some good ideas, but they were all ideas that took $50 million to get started," Phil Hughes said of his son's ambitions. "I said, 'Why don't you bring it down a little bit.'"

    So, Jeff Hughes took his father's advice and created a Web site that targets his fellow teens. He approached it from the perspective of a seasoned businessman, researching the business and his target audience, Phil Hughes said.

    The younger Hughes sold and bartered for ads that populate his Web site. A page banner will cost an advertisers $150 per month, except for the home page, which sells for $200, he said.

    But everything is negotiable, Jeff Hughes said.

    "I'm a kid: I don't have a house payment, and I don't have salaries to pay," he said. " I can lower the price to whatever I feel is a fair value."

    Visitors to OklahomaTeen.com will encounter advertising from auto dealers, radio and television stations and even the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz Arena Football League franchise.

    "I've talked with people who are impressed with his presentation and his business plan." Phil Hughes said. "He goes right up to adults and talks to them and explains his business. That says a lot about a 15ar-old."

    For Web site visitors, OklahomaTeen.com offers movie listing, links to news feeds, music videos and lyrics, unusual photographs and all sorts of what Jeff Hughes call "fun stuff."

    Apparently, the site has found a receptive audience. Citing statistics he maintains on OklahomaTeen.com visitors, Hughes said 13,110 people visited the site the week of Labor Day holiday and 45,109 visited during the month of August.

     "It has really grown and is growing all the time." Jeff Hughes said. "Somewhere around 30 percent of all visitors go directly to that (fun stuff) page."

    The site looks fresh and updated, said Norman businessman Tanner Johnson, who operates his own high tech marketing business, webEprint. 

    "I would have never figured that a 15-year-old put this together." Johnson said. "It looks pretty good. On any Web site, return visitors rely on adding new content, fresh content for people to see. Assuming he's updating content, I see no reason why he wouldn't have return visitors to the site."

    Jeff Hughes said he drives visitors to the site via flyers, contests, even marketing on AOL Instant Messenger.

    The teen entrepreneur says he wants to expand the scope of OklahomaTeen.com to include Tulsa and the rest of the state. But he insists that he does not spend all his waking hours in front of the screen.

    "This is just a business, and I don't spend a million hours a week on the computer," Jeff Hughes said. "I'm not a computer junkie or computer nerd type person. I play sports and things like that and hang out with my friends. In no way am I in love with the computer."