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The Million Dollar Homepage

Posted By Darren Rowse 22nd of September 2005 Blog News 0 Comments

Want to see an enterprising online idea? The Million dollar Home Page is an attempt by one young business student to pay his university fees by selling advertising on a site – one pixel at a time. A pixel costs $1 and there are 1,000,000 of them up for grabs.

You have to buy them in 100 pixel blocks ($100 a pop) but people are buying them and he reported on his blog yesterday that he’s already paid for his 3 years of college fees completely.

Of course – a lot of those buying pixel are poker pages and affiliate programs by the looks of things – but he’s doing ok out of it and is reporting that each advertisers is getting good click-throughs for their money.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. A lot of people having a good time copycat’n the original. So, what the hell… got my hands dirty. Now that we’re all going back to the 90’s internet with huge image maps and pixelated ads, figured why not relive the glory days of the Animated gif? Lets hope this stays humorous.. enjoy the blinkenlights!

    http://www.millionblinkenlights.com

  2. this one is the first i have seen that will post your pixel image after confirming your payment. I guess it is the New and Improved version. Wish politicians can come up with creative ways to erase the defecits.

    any way here is the link:

    http://www.millionusdollarhomepage.com

    Why didn’t i think of it first?

  3. There is another one in the scene now. The guy seems to have taken the idea and recycled it. But the theme of the site seems original. Really wish I had thought of it earlier :-(

  4. Sorry, missed out the site URL

    http://www.darlingiloveyou.com/

  5. I actually thought of doing something a lot like this several years ago, but I chose not to do anything about it, so I totally respect Alex for doing this. I’ve put together my own “spinoff” site with a twist – I’m trying to raise money for a new house, and the way my ad spaces work is a little different. I acknowledge Alex for paving the way for this new genre of page. When I sell a few more ad spaces, I’m going to buy a 30×30 ad on Alex’s page in appreciation.

    My site is called “The Friendly Neighborhood Home Page.”

    http://fnhomepage.com

  6. One of the original pixel ad sites: http://onemillionpixels.com

    Cheap ass pixels!

  7. I decided to drop my spinoff site. Refunds were issued. There are just too many people jumping on the bandwagon, and I didn’t want to be locked into hosting a mostly empty page for 5 years. It was really just something I was testing the waters with. It turns out that the water is getting too crowded with sharks.

    My url now forwards to a list of current “Million” clone sites. It’s a wiki, so anyone can edit the list if they know of new sites.

    http://fnhomepage.com

  8. Hey I thought it was such a good idea I did it myself….

  9. Maciej says: 10/05/2005 at 12:34 am

    Wow! Super sites! Yeah! Really wow! Great!

    Alex’d got a great idea. But what are the others? Yuuuuh!

    Copy-sites-parody-page: http://www.one-pixel.tk

  10. I’ve put my link at http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ site also.
    Very good idea and so simple! Impresive!

  11. Who has already calculated the number of the clones?

  12. It seems that there are a lot of copies out there but little in the way of new ideas. This one’s a bit different :

    http://www.bigbannerlottery.com

    You can win the prime advertising space every time somebody visits the homepage.

  13. 10 Ways to promote your website

    1. Pixel advertising – newest addition
    2. Monthly newsletters.
    3. Resources page.
    4. Free e-books.
    5. Link exchanges with similar sites.
    6. Offer a free affiliate program.
    7. Search engines.
    8. Buy own domain name.
    9. Write articles.
    10. Write a press release.

    Visit “The Auction Homepage” for the next level in “Pixel advertising”

    http://theauctionhomepage.com

  14. Not just a million dollar homepage, but a BETTER MILLION DOLLAR HOMEPAGE! :)

    http://www.bettermilliondollarhomepage.com

  15. And the concept winds its way into a specific market…..wine!

    http://milliondollarwine.com

    Comments, tips appreciated.

  16. Russian version. Seems to be a joke one. But it has one-tier affiliate program. http://www.millionrublehomepage.com

  17. Scottish version where you can buy your own tartan pixels. Fully automated system, you can sell or transfer your advert to others, you can move your image to any other location on the grid as long as it’s not occupied and there is an affiliate deal going. http://www.tartan-pixels.co.uk

  18. Well, if any of you start selling topic based pixels… get listed on http://targetedpixels.com ( launching soon ).

    Pixel advertising will beat PPC. Just don’t tell *G* and *Y* and tiny *k*.

    Marcel
    http://targetedpixels.com

  19. This site is donating 100% of the profit to the Red Cross to help with disaster relief such as the hurricanes on the gulf coast, or the earthquake in pakistan.

  20. Push your pixels to the max, push advertising and getting push pixel to the top og google search engine overall http://www.pixelsupermarket.com is the best site.
    buying pixels for free has never been easier with
    http://www.Pixelsupermarket.com was setup by a student to earn million dollar home page

  21. I like http://www.milliondollarsweethearts.com At least it’s not a blatant ripoff, but kind of innovative and “cute” if you will. What do you think?

  22. John D says: 10/13/2005 at 6:26 am

    Don’t forget the http://www.MillionDollarSALEpage.com

    They auction off just ONE video banner every 7 days!

    They think somebody will buy it for $1,000,000! Crazy guys at http://www.milliondollarsalepage.com

  23. Look at this one I found

    Targeted advertising for pokers business. Million dollar pokies page

    http://www.milliondollarpokiespage.com

  24. here’s yet another one, but this one also sells advertising on a car that will go on tour & race. It does sell pixels, but that isnt the primary focus. The car is the focus of this one

    http://www.milliondollarcarproject.com

  25. The milliondollarhomepage buzz is slowing coming to a end. There’s quite a lot out there nowadays. There’s basically a milliondollar thingy for everyone. The LAMEST of them all have to http://the-power-couple.blogspot.com/

    What do you think?

  26. The Indian Version of Million DOllar Home Page – Million Rupee Home Page

    http://www.millionupeehomepage.com

  27. Forget pixels, buy blocks of time – have your ad displayed at the same time, every day, for seven days!
    http://www.TimeThis.com

  28. I think Alex Tew’s idea was fantastic. I also believe that many will make money from the concept. I put my own experimental site up called http://www.milliondollarhomesite.net. It is a copy but I give Alex full credit and link his site to my buy pixel page. Good luck to all.

  29. Aah okay so me and everyone else above have jumped on the bandwagon – its like a gold rush hehe.. like a mini version of the .com boom.. I remember this used to be a bit what it was like back then.. the whole idea of sitting back and watching the money roll in off the net. I remember there were websites based on the business model of selling advertising in ways like this (banner ads though) but i havent heard of anyone making this much money from it. During the 2000 olympics I was involved in a site that for the short period of the games drew some huge traffic and they sold about $3K in ad space.. which sounded good until the hosting bill arrived which was $4K due to the excess bandwidth used. Nowdays bandwidth is so much cheaper it could work. okay well so I went and made one of these pixel selling sites too.. http://www.moneytotem.com – okay after seeing the million dollar homepage and then spending 3 hours bashing my head into the wall screaming whyyyy didn’t I think of that?? well the best that popped out of my beer soaked brain was throw in some flash and a bit of a theme a little bit of code trickery to get the totem to speak the ads and have it all fit on a typical 1024×768 screen ..
    ps for everyone trying to score some links to their pixel pages a few directories have sprung up like http://www.thepixelwars.com Cheers!
    Dylan

  30. This guy accepts donations of $1.30 or more to buy him a CORVETTE!
    Check it out, you can list your own site or business –

    http://www.BuyMeCORVETTE.com

  31. Ok, we’ve been around for a couple of weeks… wanted to squash any bugs before making the rounds…

    Our Alexa ranking is currently #7 amongst the top 100 pixel sites I can find with any ranking.

    http://pixelsanyone.com lets you select your advertising price, from .25 to $1 per pixel, depending upon the page you choose.

    Backed by an 8-year old online advertising agency, we have incredible reach. We put your ad (on our pages) in front of millions of targeted viewers weekly.

    Come see what we’re all about, and how we stretch your ad dollars.

    Shari Thomas
    http://PixelsAnyone.com

  32. Here’s my own contribution to the million dollar home page phenomenom.

    I like to think it’s a little second generation because I’ve added something – cows…

    Now, when you click the links on the homepage you don’t just get taken directly through to the advertised site, you also get a cow! Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. You can save or print the cows, collect all the different varieties and play them off together in various cow wars…

    Take a look…

    http://www.milliondollarcowpage.com

  33. hello there,

    we have launched the pixeladv. page http://www.pixel4rent.com . we sell our pixels for everyone in the world for 10 eurocent (also usd and pound sterling) per pixel. your pixels will be online for 5 years. our site will be market by seo-experts. visit us. thx ;-)

  34. this site:
    http://www.crorepati.info
    is somewhat indian version of http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com the diiference is it has 4 category pages .
    also offers one week free trial

  35. http://www.crorepati.info is definitely better than its counterpart in india

  36. Here a german Version of Millioindollarpage:

    http://milliondollar-homepage.de

  37. New cows featured at The Million Dollar Cow Page – http://www.milliondollarcowpage.com

  38. Here’s the .net version with iPod Nano giveaways:
    http://www.MillionDollarHomePage.net

  39. What do you think about these new web sites selling pixels? I’ve just put mine online at Bloc de pub, in french, and i’m trying to promote it on the Web. And I also make it cheaper, only 10 euros for a bloc of 10×10 pixels, to allow more people to advertise on it (like blogs or personnal web site). I just think 100$ for a bloc (what the other sites are doing) is quite expensive for an individual who has his own personnal web site !
    Do you think this can of web site can last for a long time or it’s juste a temporary web site ?

  40. I discovered last evening an amazing site, about a marketing or promotion expert, who discovers business solutions to worldwide factories, that created this site.

    Buy an idea for one million dollars… do you think that he will succed in his aim??

    http://www.buyanideaforonemilliondollars.com

    i think it’s quite impossible, but, if it would not so… he would be a genius and he could go living on a golf court and reading the news on his golden laptop!!

    what do u think about it??

  41. I discovered last evening an amazing site, about a marketing or promotion expert, who discovers business solutions to worldwide factories, that created this site.

    Buy an idea for one million dollars… do you think that he will succed in his aim??

    http://www.buyanideaforonemilliondollars.com

    i think it’s quite impossible, but, if it would not so… he would be a genius and he could go living on a golf court and reading the news on his golden laptop!!

    what do u think about it??

  42. The website of Canadian Million Charity Pixels, pixel ads to support your chosen charity by selling 1 million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each.
    http://www.canadianmillioncharitypixels.com/

  43. Like5 Free Text Link Advertising Onto 20 x 20 Circles Check it Out Now
    http://www.like5.com Or http://www.Likefive.com Tell Your Friends

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