The Milliondolarhomepage: An Uncomplicated Website for Millionaires
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The difficulties experienced by a student and the limits of creativity are parallel to each other. The more difficult the situation, the more creative he is likely to be. If we agree with this thesis, let's support it by examining how Alex Tew made internet history during his student years in 2005.
He was worried about how he would pay off his student loans.
Alex Tew, who lives in England, created this website called The Million Dollar Homepage in August 2005, when he was 21 years old. He was about to start his Business Administration degree at the University of Nottingham and was worried he might be faced with a student loan that could take years to pay off for his 3-year degree.
Tew, who founded 'The Million Dollar Homepage' to make money, decided to sell a total of 1 million pixels on a website for 1 dollar per pixel.
This way, buyers could add their own images, logos or advertisements and link to their own websites. Well, a question comes to mind; Why did Tew, who lives in England, choose the dollar instead of the British pound? Because Tew thought that the US had more internet users than the UK and that there would be a larger buyer base if the pixels were sold in US currency.
He describes how he felt at the beginning as follows: “I knew from the very beginning that this idea had potential; But this was something that could have gone in any direction. I thought I had nothing to lose except the site's registration fee of 50 euros. “I knew the idea was unusual enough to generate interest … The Internet is a very powerful tool.”
So, what does a website created when pixels purchased from all over the world come together look like?
Home page of the site; It consists of a banner containing the name of the site, a counter showing the number of pixels sold (there is a 'Sold Out' text as all pixels have been sold for now), a navigation bar that links to the internal pages of the site, and an area of 1,000,000 pixels divided into 10,000 100-pixel blogs.
Alex mentions that The Million Dollar Homepage, which had a great impact in the press, created a mystery by spreading by word of mouth and grew in this way.
After the press release published in September 2015, which first drew attention to the site, The Million Dollar Homepage was covered by BBC Online, The Register, The Daily Telegraph and PC Pro. Tew also appeared as a guest on nationwide morning news programs Sky News Sunrise and BBC Breakfast to discuss the site. However, The Wall Street Journal wrote that the site was an inspiration for other pixel-selling websites.
Tew describes what happened during the project's expansion process as follows: “The most important thing in attracting press attention was the idea itself of creating the site. So much so that the site was unique and unusual enough. I just had to be patient for the first few days for the idea. I did this by issuing a press release that had a catalytic effect. “When this interest was combined with the traditional word-of-mouth method of spreading, a real buzz about the site started and this increased interest even more.”
On January 1, 2006, the last remaining 1000 pixels were sold in an auction on eBay. With this sale, Alex Tew earned a total of $1,037,100 from this website.
On August 26, 2005, “Own a piece of internet history!” The site, founded with the slogan, quickly became an internet phenomenon. It peaked at #127 in web traffic rankings on Alexa. On January 1, 2006, the price of the last 1000 pixels was increased for an auction on eBay. The auction ended on January 11, 2006 with a winning bid of $38,100, bringing the total to $1,037,100 in gross proceeds. Its purpose; The site, which was to sell all the pixels and thus generate a million dollars of income for its owner, thus achieved its goal.