Yes, even the simpliest crazy idea can get you big bucks. Just look at 21-year old Alex Tew of Wiltshire, England who came up with the idea for “The Million Dollar Homepage“.
His business model?
The idea is simple: to try and make $1m (US) by selling 1,000,000 pixels for $1 each. Hence, ‘The Million Dollar Homepage”. The main motivation for doing this is to pay for my degree studies, because I don’t like the idea of graduating with a huge student debt. I know people who are paying off student loans 15-20 years after they graduated. Not a nice thought!
Who would buy that sort of bull? Well, just so happened that a lot of people were amazed at how crazy this is and it’s actually getting huge traffic and profits. As of today, he already grossed up to USD$28,800 or roughly Php1.62 Million.
The idea got so hyped up that it was digged and traffic was rushing in waves. It made his new website an instant fame. Alexa has even ranked The Million Dollar Homepage 4th in it’s list of “Movers and Shakers” right next to Apple, Chevrolet and NFL.
It’s still a long way to $1 Million dollars but Alex Tew is already a title-holder.
13 comments
Check out http://www.PixelAds4All.com – they offer a FREE 100 by 100 pixel “tool tip image” with the purchase of your ad, which acts like a billboard for your site! They are also currently offering their pixels for 50% off, or $50 USD for a 100 pixel block.
Hi falks,
I do find the idea very attractive and smart indeed.
I just have two remarks :
1/ Alex took his idea from a belgian student who was himself inspired by http://www.savetoby.com and other Californian websites…
2/ Alex fooled advertisers and journalists such as THE TIMES as he used fake ads (affiliate progs) to start is grid.
I’m laughing when I see that his making all his money on fake stories and success. 😀
Hello I’ve read that you wrote an article about Alex Tew’s MillionDollarHomepage.com brillant idea !
About the last comment from arnold, can you point out who is this belgian student you’re refering to ?
Well, since then he passed the 600 000 $US milestone ! And he’s about to go to the USA for a press tour, so there will be another round of media attention on his homepage very soon. He will do radio/tv/newspaper interviews, that’s going to be fun because we can follow his blog day after day on his site.
If you are planning to write a follow up to your article, you can say that there is now over 500 copycats sites from all over the world !
If you want to take an example of a french website, you can link to mine because it is the foremost french resource on the subject of Alex Tew’s new paradigm and because I tried no to blindly translate the concept. I tried to add a twist to the idea, by drawing an image of France and organizing several little things on my site, like a BEST SPONSOR, a pixel page cheaper than the homepage, and even a pixel page totally free of charge for open source project and caring organisations.
Also, I bought 600 pixels on the original milliondollarhomepage that link directly to my site, that’s my way of paying back Alex..
My site is at http://www.MonPremierMillion.com
Mon Premier Million means My First Million : I am still a bit far from it 🙂
Thank you for your attention, I don’t want my email to be too long but if you want additionnal information about anything related to Alex Tew’s idea you’re welcome to email me !
Cheers,
Pascal Cola
well, its good for him (Alex – why ddnt i just write the actual name insted of referring to him as a “HIM”, that should have saved me a lot of time explaining this) that peopele actually catched on to his idea, lucky for him.. i have the same idea tho, but lemme just put a lid to it first, i dnt wanna spill the beans yet..
After seeing the success that milliondollarhomepage.com was having, I started up my own ad space website, however it’s based on bytes rather than pixels. Depending on how low you can get the file size, ads can cost over half as much as ads on pixel-based ad space sites. To the best of my knowledge, it’s the first byte-based ad site on the internet. Hopefully, it’s enough of a departure from the “pixel pusher†concept to create decent traffic and create a buzz. Check out http://www.buckabyte.com for more on the internet’s first byte-size site.
hi, i just launched a FREE pixel ad page for pinoy owned websites and blogs. check it out!
http://zeropesohomepage.com
thanks 🙂
Here’s one of the nicer and better pinoy pixel ads site, http://www.pinoypixads.com. It’s the pinoy twist on the original pixel concept by Alex Tew and his Million Dollar Homepage. They offer premium & free pixels for filipino individuals & businesses. Free classified ads forum has been added to attract more traffic.
Australia asks Devon Designer for Help
Devon internet businessman and web designer Alan Wheeler has launched an innovative web advertising service which has already attracted an international company to sign up.
Bovey Tracey based Mr Wheeler has also been asked by Australian charity ‘Hope for Children’ to help them design and set up a similar web-based advertising service.
His web-service http://www.millionairepixels.co.uk enables businesses to buy a square of pixels, on the web page. Customers click on the coloured pixels and are immediately transported to the advertiser’s web site.
With each block of 100 pixels costing just £60 (60p per unit) it is, believes Mr Wheeler, one of the best value advertising and promotion options for businesses of all sizes and a potentially valuable boost to tourism related services.
And, in the longer term, advertisers could end up bidding for space on what is being described as internet ‘real estate’.
Mr Wheeler, aged 42, said “It’s a quick and easy way for people to find a service or firm and it also gives competitive advantage to the businesses because, with the millions of web sites available, this will draw potential customers to them much more easily.â€
“Without a doubt there are people globally willing to pay for quite gimmicky advertising solutions. The internet is a fast moving place with over eight million web pages added on a daily basis. For a website to stand out and generate sales it needs to stand out from the rest,†he added
Last autumn university student Alex Tew set up the Million Dollar site and since then has been overwhelmed by the success of a venture intended to raise enough money to pay for his way through university.
Alan Wheeler’s http://www.millionairepixels.co.uk is, he says, the next big step in the concept because, in effect, businesses are ‘leasing’ virtual real estate on the web to promote their businesses.
Launched just two weeks ago, http://www.millionairepixels.co.uk has already won the backing of international business Optis Europe Ltd, an operations management company, which is using the site to promote its business.
With more customers advertising it is, says Mr Wheeler, inevitable that like real property, some of the pixels on his site will become increasingly valuable for their ‘owners’ as more business is generated.
However, the last 1200 pixels, or advertising blocks, will eventually be auctioned off in support of the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, said Mr Wheeler.
I believe that Alex’s site still generates some indirect value for advertisers at least by improving their visibility in search engines. It has a PageRank of 7 and many still continue to add links to it (by the way, this article has just added one link). So, getting the link from website with such a high PageRank for as low as 1$ it is clearly a reasonable investment.
Good luck to all the copycats 🙂
http://www.milliondollarhosting.net
Russian girl sells her body on internet….
She is russian and she is trying to sell her part of the body in a shape of pixels on her web page…. ISellBody.com
thought it is interesting….
wonder what is that?
another site for easy moneymaking?
mostexpensivelink.com
A site for the original is amazing avatarpublicity.com. The incredible thing is that the site creators are advertised on a female avatar in 3D. Never seen such a creative idea. It seems that the mill not to never finishing.