yeah... all we need is FR about $200. i'll kick in ten pixels.
Posted on 12/29/2005 4:18:12 PM PST by george76
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, 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
UK tax rates at that level of income are about 40%. Not that different from US rates (35% + 1.45% for Medicare, plus 6.2% of the first $90,000 in income, plus applicable state taxes).
Wow, I constantly overestimate the intelligence of marketers. Here I am busting my butt applying for patents and developing prototypes and this guy makes a cool million selling pixels. Good for him. I'm not worthy.
Contrary to popular belief, PT Barnum didn't say that.
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.html
That's a heckuvan idea! He deserves the money!
How did he get anyone to believe that the 10 x 10 square of pixels was worth $100? Who is going to be constantly surfing into his site to look at this e-mural?
I saw this a while ago when there were only a few ads on the page. It's awesome that it worked out so well!
yeah... all we need is FR about $200. i'll kick in ten pixels.
"I spent college lying in bed thinking about girls."
Now he can pay for them, too.
"You should read the testimonials."
Outstanding. This should make for a required case study in business school. It is simplicity itself.
All those bucks flowing in, and he splurges on Gary Coleman?? Sheesh.
I just looked at it, it gave me a headache!
It's a 15 minute of fame thing, but it allows all the people who placed ads to capitalize on it.
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