The One Million Dollar Idea

Via Computerworld - Alex Tew, a 21-year old (once struggling) UK student, has earned nearly $1,000,000 since the beginning of September 2005 for an idea that seems so simple, yet is so completely original and unique. While sitting in bed one night last August brainstorming a number of different ways to pay for his college tuition, Alex came with the idea to turn a Web page into a billboard made up of a million pixels - and then selling each pixel for a dollar to anyone who wants to put up their logo on the site. Alex’s Web page, titled The Million Dollar Homepage, has currently sold 912,000 pixels at the rate of one dollar a pixel (do the math).

The minimum purchase is $100, which gets you a 10-by-10 square - as any other size would be too small to see. But, if you think that placing your logo on a few little pixels amongst hundreds-of-thousands isn’t worth your time, think again. As quoted from a pixel buying customer, "Since placing a one-square ad on Million Dollar Homepage, we have seen our web traffic go from 90 hits a day to an average of 5000. One day saw a 19,500 hit count.” Others have testified nearly the same thing - but no wonder, The Million Dollar Homepage has gained attention from just about every major outlet in the world.

What's harder for me to believe is that around September his site once looked like this:


But now looks like this:


Oh how I wish I could have come up with a similar way to pay for my tuition. The best idea I ever came up with was to charge people for attending my parties, but that lasted no longer than one night. Hats off to you Alex - but why stop at a million? Why not shoot for a billion?!