Turning gift cards into cold hard cash.

Cameron Johnson, 19, has been starting businesses since he was 9. His latest, Certificateswap.com, allows people to buy and sell unwanted gift certificates. UPFRONT talked to Johnson about his new venture.

What's the idea behind Certificateswap.com?

Let's say you're a high school senior and you get a gift certificate to Target, but you don't shop at Target. You can sell that $50 certificate and end up with, say, $45 cash. And that's obviously something you can use.

What are your goats for the business?

We wanted to send a message that teenagers can create a welt-ran company, and a highly trafficked Web site, and a well branded image without spending millions of dollars in advertising.... We have thousands of registered users and have done tens of thousands of dollars in sales, so we're off to a good start, But now we're looking to venture capital to take it to the next level.

What is venture capital exactly?

It's an investment from an outside party who takes an equity stake in your company. So in exchange for X amount of money invested, they would then have [partial] ownership.

What's the key to making it big in the dot-com world? Obviously, just like any business, you have to minimize your expenses ... and have a unique idea. And with the Internet, it's timing, timing, timing.