Alex Tew, from Wiltshire,
England, created "
The Million
Dollar Homepage" website to help the
21 year old raise money for his
university education. Launched on August
26, 2005, the website generated a gross
income of $1,037,100 USD and has a
Google PageRank of 7. The site's Alexa
ranking as of
January 14, 2006 is 127.
The index page of the site consists of a
1000 x 1000 pixel grid (one million
pixels), which he sells image-based
links on for US $1 per pixel, in minimum
ten by ten blocks. A person who buys one
or more of these pixelblocks can design
a tiny image which will be displayed on
them, and also decide a URL which he or
she wants them to link to, as well as a
slogan displayed when hovering the
cursor over the link. The aim of the
site was to sell all of the pixels in
the image, thus generating one million
dollars of income for the creator, which
has been accomplished.
On January 1, 2006, the final 1,000
pixels left were put up for auction on
ebay.co.uk. The auction closed on
January 11 with the winning bid of
$38,100.00. This brought the final tally
to $1,037,000 USD in profits.
Origins
Tew wanted to find a way of funding his
degree studies, since he was starting a
course at the University of Nottingham
in a month. He had the idea of selling
pixels, and even though he didn't really
believe anyone would want to buy them,
he decided to go ahead with the plan,
knowing he had very little to lose by
trying. He planned not to market the
site, but to simply allow it to become
known by word of mouth. Within three
days, he sold his first 20 x 20 pixel
block, to an online music site. From
then on, with only a press release in
terms of self-promotion, he sold several
blocks a day. To Tew's surprise, it only
took about two weeks before he had
enough money to pay his first year at
university. By now, a number of
well-known blogs and UK newspapers
(e.g., The Daily Telegraph, The
Guardian, and The Sun) had noted his
endeavor, and the numbers of orders
skyrocketed. A month on from the site's
launch, he had made $152,900.
Tew notes that compared to most Internet
advertisement, his Web site is good
business for his buyers as well, due to
high traffic and low prices. The minimum
duration of the blocks is five years.
Blocks are static in that they are not
changed except in extenuating
circumstances, such as failure or
buy-out of the company posting the
pixelblock(s).
The website's visibilty was dramatically
accelerated when the initial press
release heralding the Million Dollar
Homepage was posted on Digg.com and
reached Digg's highly visited homepage.
Tew says. "The more
people talked about the site, the more
money I made," he says. "And the more
money I made, the more people talked
about the site. It's a self-perpetuating
idea."
Critics of the site claim that it is
nothing but a large advertising banner;
the defenders point out that what gives
it so many visitors is not the banners
themselves, but rather the original and
novel concept of the site.
Imitators
A simple Internet search on "pixel
advertising" or "pixel ads" will reveal
many sites that are seeking to emulate
the success of the Million Dollar
Homepage - it has become a minor
subgenre in Internet advertising. There
are even scripts for sale to automate
the operation of such a website.
However, the limited success of these
imitators may have an impact on its
long-term sustainability. While
Tew thinks the copycats are "quite
funny, really," he doesn't like the
"rip-off sites" that borrow heavily from
his. "The one thing that everybody
seems to be missing is that it's one of
those crazy ideas that only works once.
I was first to market and therefore I
got 99 percent of the attention. Good
luck to the imitators."
