It all started in the summer of 2005 when a young guy called Alex Tew was trying to figure out a way to make money to pay for his studies. At that time he couldn’t even dream that we was soon to become a millionaire in a very short period of time; probably the fastest first million dollars anyone has ever made without winning the lottery
One day he had the idea to make a webpage and sell the advertising space (haven’t we all?) So far so good, but he did not have basically nothing to write about and no money to invest in promoting his website. So how could a website that has no content at all make money? Most of us would say that it is impossible…
Surprisingly, after only 4 months, all the pixels were sold, and Alex made his first million. Further more, the last set of 1000 pixels was sold on ebay for a lot more than 1 dollar per pixel.
How could this work?
In my opinion the ingredients for his huge success were a combination of an original idea, smart naming and good word of mouth advertising.
The first step to his huge success was the name of his webpage “The Million Dollar Page” and the slogan “Own a piece of internet history“. As an advertiser, I believe that I would want my company to be advertised on a page with that name, but I wouldn’t probably be the first to pay for advertising there, without knowing for sure that it will be a success; Luckily for Alex, others did not think like me, and after having sold his first 400 px, it all went smoothly. When I think of it, it is normal that a page with such a title would attract interest, and when visitors come by, they click on the ads to see who has bought advertising space there. Judging from the testimonials, the traffic of the advertisers increased exponentially so everybody was happy. Pretty soon, more and more people rushed to buy pixels so that they could “own a piece of internet history” themselfs and Alex could not believe that things were going so well.
The popularity oh his website was growing faster and faster and he has generated a lot of press and television interest which resulted in tons of traffic that were making his clients really happy.
After 4 months of answering thousands of emails, phone calls, interviews and encountering several technical issues (which he has managed to take care of) he has sold everything and became a millionaire.
You can read the entire story on his blog.
Another great idea
Some people say that a such a successful idea only comes ones in a lifetime. Again, the young genius Alex Tew has managed to prove this wrong. At the beginning of December 2006 he has launched another project that looks to be at least as big as the million dollar page. It is called pixelotto and it works like this:
There are 1 million pixels available for sale (same as for the million dollar page), only this time the price is 2 dollars per pixel. The reason for this price increase is that Alex is offering a 1 million dollars price to one lucky winner who clicked on the ads. You heard me wright! “A month after all the ad space is sold, one ad is selected at random and a winner is chosen from all those people who clicked that correct ad. A millionaire is made! The winner will also get to nominate a charity of their choice to receive $100,000″
In the end I just want to say that against all odds, Alex proved that it is possible to make a ton of money without any content and with no funds for advertising… just a great idea! Don’t be in a hurry to copy his ideas though… there have been thousands of attempts so far, and none that I heard of had any success at all.
Technorati: Internet millionaires, online success
