December 30th, 2005
Envious Much? Don’t Go to the Million Dollar HomePage
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Ever see something, some idea that made someone rich and think “Why didn’t I think of that?” Or “I thought of that years ago!” Well, if you’re the envious type, stop reading now.
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.
He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, 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-coloured confetti of ads. Source: Reuters
We Say: Why didn’t I think of that!? Sob! 
MissingFrame says:
I remember reading about that quite a while ago and thinking “Who is gonna ever buy those pixels?” … Now we know!
December 30th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
Alice says:
I know. I saw it when it had a few pixels filled up but there you have it……
December 30th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Charles says:
Does anybody know if this is really legit? Not that I doubt it is possible… Just that the gap between me looking at a web site with several hundred ads and a bank account with over $900K in it is quite a stretch.
I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt, but with an edge of skepticism.
December 30th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
Jasper says:
smart, to bad it not my Idea
December 30th, 2005 at 8:51 pm
Doug Felteau says:
They are definitely real, we signed up for $400 (4 of their 10×10 pixels) and have seen decent referers from that investment. The investment is suppose to live for five years so $400 didn’t seem to be too much of a cost.
BTW, there are quite a few knockoffs of his idea… all of those are complete flops!
December 30th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Alice says:
This reminds me of those “cyber-begging” sites that started with savekaryn.com I believe. She ran up 30K in credit card debt and asked people for donations. The site was so well written and she did a daily update on how she saved money and changed her ways, and most people gave her money and she is now debt-free and did a book about the project. Then came all the other copycats - people with cancer and debts and so on, but she was the first and hit on a great solution out of desperation.
December 31st, 2005 at 1:03 pm
jeff says:
This guy takes the pixel thing a step further…
SaveMyPenis.com.
A little nutty, but I got a laugh from the blog entries.
January 1st, 2006 at 10:41 am
Guillaume says:
@Doug: the dollars are real but the pixels are not.
Check this site for real pixels.
January 2nd, 2006 at 2:55 am
Nice Life Fund says:
The Delusion: A Million Generous People Might Each Give Me A Dollar, If I Asked Them Nicely.
http://www.nicelifefund.com
July 15th, 2007 at 10:26 pm