The Million Dollar Homepage

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The Million Dollar Homepage
The Million Dollar Homepage (as of January 2021)
Type of site
Pixel advertising
OwnerAlex Tew
Revenue$1,037,100
URLMillionDollarHomepage.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationNone
Launched26 August 2005; 18 years ago (2005-08-26)
Current statusPartly active

The Million Dollar Homepage is a

cursor over the link. The aim of the website was to sell all the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator. The Wall Street Journal has commented that the site inspired other websites that sell pixels.[1][2]

Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an

Internet phenomenon, with copycat websites emerging in response. The Alexa ranking of web traffic peaked at around 127; As of 9 May 2009, it was 40,044.[3] On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay
. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross.

During the January 2006 auction, the website was subject to a

Wiltshire Constabulary investigated the attack and extortion attempt.[4][5]

After a short time, Tew decided to drop out of the business degree program for which he had created the site in the first place. As of 2019 The Million Dollar Homepage was still receiving thousands of daily viewers, although by 2017, many of the website's links suffered from link rot, causing the URLs to no longer function as originally intended.

History

Development

From the outset I knew the idea had potential, but it was one of those things that could have gone either way. My thinking was I had nothing to lose (apart from the 50 Euros or so it cost to register the domain and setup the hosting). I knew that the idea was quirky enough to create interest ... The Internet is a very powerful medium.

Alex Tew, 22 February 2006.[6]

Alex Tew, a student from

student loan that could take years to repay.[7] As a money-raising idea, Tew decided to sell a million pixels on a website for $1 each; purchasers would add their own image, logo or advertisement, and have the option of including a hyperlink to their website. Pixels were sold for US dollars rather than UK pounds; the US has a larger online population than the UK, and Tew believed more people would relate to the concept if the pixels were sold in US currency.[8] In 2005, the pound was strong against the dollar: £1 was worth approximately $1.80,[9] and that cost per pixel may have been too expensive for many potential buyers.[8] Tew's setup costs were €50, which paid for the registration of the domain name and a basic web-hosting package. The website went live on 26 August 2005.[10]

The

homepage featured a Web banner with the site's name and a pixel counter displaying the number of pixels sold, a navigation bar containing nine small links to the site's internal web pages, and an empty square grid of 1,000,000 pixels divided into 10,000 100-pixel blocks.[11] Tew promised customers that the site would remain online for at least five years – that is, until at least 26 August 2010.[12]

Pixel sales

Because individual pixels are too small to be seen easily, pixels were sold in 100-pixel "blocks" measuring 10 × 10 pixels; the minimum price was thus $100.

word of mouth;[2] however, after the site had made $1,000, a press release was sent out that was picked up by the BBC.[7][15] The technology news website The Register featured two articles on The Million Dollar Homepage in September.[16][17] By the end of the month, The Million Dollar Homepage had received $250,000 and was ranked Number 3 on Alexa Internet's list of "Movers and Shakers" behind the websites for Britney Spears and Photo District News.[18] On 6 October, Tew reported the site received 65,000 unique visitors; it received 1465 Diggs, becoming one of the most Dugg links that week.[19] Eleven days later, the number had increased to 100,000 unique visitors. On 26 October, two months after The Million Dollar Homepage was launched, more than 500,900 pixels had been sold to 1,400 customers.[20] By New Year's Eve, Tew reported that the site was receiving hits from 25,000 unique visitors every hour and had an Alexa Rank of 127,[20] and that 999,000 of the 1,000,000 pixels had been sold.[2]

On 1 January 2006, Tew announced that because the demand was so great for the last 1,000 pixels, "the most fair and logical thing" to do was auction them on

The Prince's Trust, a charity for young people, Tew expected his net income to be $650,000–$700,000.[2]

Pixel purchasers included

website designs and holidays.[26]

DDoS attack

On 7 January 2006, three days before the auction of the final 1,000 pixels was due to end, Tew received an e-mail from an organisation called "The Dark Group", and was told The Million Dollar Homepage would become the victim of a

distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) if a ransom of $5,000 was not paid by 10 January.[27][28] Believing the threat to be a hoax, he ignored it, but a week later received a second e-mail threat: "Hello u website is under us atack to stop the DDoS send us 50000$."[27] Again, he ignored the threat, and the website was flooded with extra traffic and e-mails, causing it to crash. "I haven't replied to any of them as I don't want to give them the satisfaction and I certainly don't intend to pay them any money. What is happening to my website is like terrorism. If you pay them, new attacks will start," Tew said.[4]

The website was inaccessible to visitors for a week until the host server upgraded the security system, and filtered traffic through anti-DDoS

Wiltshire Constabulary's Hi-Tech Crime Unit and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were called to investigate the extortion and attack; they believed it originated in Russia.[4][5]

Reception

The crucial thing in creating the media interest was the idea itself: it was unique and quirky enough to stand out. I only had to push the idea a bit in the first few days by sending out a press release which essentially acted as a catalyst. This interest coupled with traditional word-of-mouth created a real buzz about the homepage, which in turn created more interest.

Alex Tew, 22 February 2006.[6]

Following the September press release that first brought attention to the site, The Million Dollar Homepage was featured in numerous British media articles and programmes.[7][16][29][30] By November 2005, the website had received attention from The Wall Street Journal[1] and media around the world.[31] During a week-long trip to the US, Tew gave several media interviews.[32]

The concept was described as "simple and brilliant",

banner ads and pop-ups."[14] Oldenburg continues, "it looks like a bulletin board on designer steroids, an advertising train wreck you can't not look at. It's like getting every pop-up ad you ever got in your life, at once. It's the Internet equivalent of suddenly feeling like you want to take a shower."[14]

As the final pixels were being auctioned, Tew was interviewed on

BBC News Magazine.[10] The Wall Street Journal wrote about The Million Dollar Homepage and its impact on the Internet community. "Mr. Tew himself has taken on celebrity status in the Internet community ... the creative juice ... paints an interesting picture of online entrepreneurship".[2]

Legacy

Tew dropped out of the business degree the site was set up to fund after one term.

social networking business.[38][39] On May 4, 2012, Tew co-founded software company Calm with Michael Acton Smith.[40] As of 2016, Tew was working as an entrepreneur in San Francisco.[41]

As of 2017, only the main page of the website was available, with all sub pages returning a

404 Not Found message.[42] By 2017, the links on the still-live main page of the site demonstrated a considerable degree of link rot. Of the 2,816 original links, 547 (342,000 pixels, sold for $342,000) were dead, and 489 (145,000 pixels, sold for $145,000) redirected to a different domain. The report stated that, of the remaining links, that "the majority do not seem to reflect their original purpose".[42] By April 2019, according to the BBC, approximately 40% of the site's links were suffering from link rot.[43] The site was still receiving several thousands of viewers per day.[43]

Similar websites

Many other sites sold advertising by pixels.[2][14] Tew said of the sites, "[they] popped up almost immediately; now there are hundreds of Web sites selling pixels. The copycats are all competing with each other."[1] "...they have very little ads, therefore I guess it's not going too well for them. The idea only works once and relies on novelty ... any copy-cat sites will only have pure comedy value, whereas mine possibly has a bit of comedy PLUS some actual pull in advertising dollars ... so I say good luck to the imitators!"[44][45]

See also

References

  1. ^
    Wall Street Journal. p. B1. Archived
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    Wall Street Journal. p. B8. Archived
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  3. ^ "milliondollarhomepage.com Site Information". Alexa Internet. Archived from the original on 3 June 2009. Retrieved 9 May 2009.
  4. ^ a b c d "Blackmailers target $1m website". BBC News. 18 January 2006. Archived from the original on 2 October 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2009.
  5. ^ a b "Million dollar pixel site targeted by hackers". NBC News. Associated Press. 18 January 2006. Archived from the original on 18 March 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2009.
  6. ^ a b "Ask the expert: How to make a million". FT.com. 22 February 2006. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2009.
  7. ^ a b c d e "Student's cash-raising net scheme". BBC News. 22 September 2005. Archived from the original on 23 June 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
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  9. ^ "Current and Historical Rate Tables". XE.com. Archived from the original on 21 April 2012. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
  10. ^ a b Geoghegan, Tom (6 January 2006). "The million-dollar student". BBC News. Archived from the original on 27 August 2010. Retrieved 4 February 2009.
  11. ^ Tew, Alex (15 September 2005). "The Million Dollar Homepage". The Million Dollar Homepage. Archived from the original on 15 September 2005. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
  12. ^ Kawamoto, Dawn (18 January 2006). "Blackmailers try to black out Million Dollar Homepage". CNET. Archived from the original on 26 May 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2009.
  13. Entrepreneur Magazine. Archived
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  15. ^ a b c d Boggan, Steve (14 October 2005). "Million dollar boy". The Times. London. Archived from the original on 23 June 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
  16. ^ a b Richardson, Tim (8 September 2009). "Student flogs pixels to fund education". The Register. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
  17. ^ Richardson, Tim (20 September 2009). "Million pixel student makes £32k". The Register. Archived from the original on 23 June 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
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  25. ^ Richardson, Tim (12 January 2006). "Pixel-flogging student makes a million". The Register. Archived from the original on 20 November 2010. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
  26. ^ Tew, Alex. "Pixel List". The Million Dollar Homepage. Archived from the original on 1 February 2009. Retrieved 30 January 2009.
  27. ^ a b Fontanella, James (18 January 2006). "Hackers blackmail milliondollar site". FT.com. Archived from the original on 12 August 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2009.
  28. ^ a b Savill, Richard (20 January 2006). "Blackmailers target student's $1m website". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 14 May 2009. Retrieved 5 February 2009.
  29. ^ a b Savill, Richard (24 September 2005). "Student solves debt fear as website earns £56,000 in a month". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 4 March 2010. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
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    * BBC Breakfast. Presenters: Dermot Murnaghan, Natasha Kaplinsky. BBC One
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    * China Daily "Cash pours in for student with $1m Web idea". China Daily. Reuters. 31 December 2005. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 February 2009.
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    * Local news programmes, NBC 11 News. Interviewer: Cary Berglund. NBC. KNBC, Los Angeles, California. 16 November 2005. "Million Dollar Homepage - Secret of Success". Archived from the original
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  42. ^ a b "Blog - Library Innovation Lab". Harvard University. 21 July 2017. Archived from the original on 5 November 2017. Retrieved 1 January 2018.
  43. ^ a b Dowling, Stephen (2 April 2019). "BBC - Future - Why there's so little left of the early internet?". BBC. Archived from the original on 4 April 2019. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
  44. ^ Fontanella, James (11 January 2006). "Dollar-per-pixel ad site nets student $1m". FT.com. Archived from the original on 13 November 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2009.
  45. ^ Tew, Alex (26 October 2005). "The Million Dollar Homepage - FAQ". The Million Dollar Homepage. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2011.

External links

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