In case you hadn’t heard about it on CNN, Fox, ABC, or MSNBC among others, the final 1,000 pixels on The Million Dollar Home Page are for sale on eBay. With 5 days remaining, the current bid is just over $145,000. The simple and brilliant idea from the 21-year-old mind of Alex Tews has web-entrepreneurs shrieking “why didn’t I think of that?” as they scramble to put up imitation sites offering anything from skin to dismemberment.
Yes, I said dismemberment.
To get you up to speed, the concept was to set up a webpage made up of one million blank pixels for sale for $1 each. An advertiser could by some cheap web real estate, and Alex could make $1,000,000. The British yonker has since sold 999,000 pixels, rocketing him into the marketing hall of fame for making “Internet history.” In fact, buying the final 1,000 pieces of Internet history is his main selling point.
The testimonials on the website rave about their investment, bragging about 40-50% sales increases and 10 fold increases in traffic.
“Our hits have quadrupled, and our sales have gone through the roof,” informs Lollipop Animation’s Will Marston.
“Overnight we saw an 1800% increase of hits to our site and a total of 1200% for the month of September,” brags Greg of The Date Exchange.
Of course one has to wonder if, after the hoopla dies downafter CNN and Fox have forgotten about Alex and his simple concept, the traffic will die too.
Obviously the top bidder on eBay right now is making a $145,000 bet, as are the imitation sites that have sprung up to cash in on the craze. There are a number poseurs, script monkeys, and domain chuckers who’ve banked variations on the Million Dollar Homepage name.
There’s now the SexyPixelHomepage, with a buoyant take on the original; the 2 Million Pixels.com page; the Australian Million Dollar Homepage; and a supposed charity pixel site, SaveMyPenis.com, where the owner claims if sponsors don’t buy enough pixels for charity, he’llum, (shiver)emasculate himself.
One thing’s for certain, even if traffic never returns after the buzz quiets down, Tews will be a millionaire and his entombed piece of Internet history will be of little concern.
