If only you thought of this first..

Gonzoie - Luclin · Post by **Gonzoie - Luclin** » December 30, 2005, 2:46 am

LONDON (Reuters) - If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.

Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.

Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.

He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking out how he would pay for university.

The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A 10 by 10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.

He sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $1,000, he issued a press release.

That was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.

So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels. Tew's home page now looks like an online Times Square, festooned with a multi-colored confetti of ads.

"All the money's kind of sitting in a bank account," Tew told Reuters from his home in Wiltshire, southwest England. "I've treated myself to a car. I've only just passed my driving test so I've bought myself a little black mini."

The site features testimonials from advertisers, some of whom bought spots as a lark, only to discover that they were receiving actual valuable Web hits for a fraction of the cost of traditional Internet advertising.

Meanwhile Tew has had to juggle running the site with his first term at university, where he is studying business.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 30, 2005, 3:41 am

Ok, I'll bite... WTF?

He might be smart, but the people ponying up for that are fucktards.

Tegellan · Post by **Tegellan** » December 30, 2005, 5:47 am

And, the link is dead.

Cotto · Post by **Cotto** » December 30, 2005, 6:21 am

Thats cause someone killed the little bastard.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 30, 2005, 6:31 am

Tegellan wrote:And, the link is dead.

Yeh, I got that and tried a few mins later and it was working; albeit still crappy.

Hesten · Post by **Hesten** » December 30, 2005, 7:59 am

Its because there is a , at the end of the link, remove it and youre good

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » December 30, 2005, 10:35 am

Zaelath wrote:Ok, I'll bite... WTF?

He might be smart, but the people ponying up for that are fucktards.

Actually, especially for the people that did it early, it was probably a pretty good deal. They mentioned this a few weeks back on the This Week in Tech podcast and the host said that an associate of his that put an ad on the page got a lot of referrals from it. Most of the ads are pretty small and a couple hundred bucks for a piece of advertising even for a relatively small company isn't really that much. Of course, it only works in this case because it was new and generated some net buzz/news attention. Attempts to replicate it, unless someone can come up with some unique new twist are probably going to fail.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 30, 2005, 9:54 pm

The people that did it early would have "stood out" from the blank page, but they would also have seen less hits.

Even then, Mr "got a lot of referrals" doesn't mean he made a cent back.

While I agree $200 is piddling small change, to even a micro-business, $200 pissed against a wall is still $200 they could have spent better.

To me it makes about as much sense as creating "The advertisement channel" on cable that shows nothing but 5 second adverts for $1. Wow, that's so cheap, and wow I'm never going to turn that channel on.

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » December 31, 2005, 1:48 am

I wouldn't call it completely wasted. This is a curiosity, and curiosities tend to generate public attention, as evidenced by the fact we're eve talking about it in the first place. I personally don't see it as an effective advertising method; going to that link and being hit with a riot of colours isn't really selling anything to me other than the urge to close the window, but I'm sure it's been effective for some people.

podarok · Post by **podarok** » December 31, 2005, 1:53 am

Helps people who want to have seizures I guess. Also, the blurb says we should be jealous... I don't find myself jealous so much of his making money as his ability to code a website. Wonder how much that'd cost to maintain initially.