Million Dollar Home Page

[chromate]

Anyone seen this: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ Check out the "press" section for quick info.

I'm surprised people are paying so much for such small amounts of space - especially based on his traffic (less than 1k uniques a day). All credit to the guy though! He's made a lot already. It'll probably slow down from here on in though as press coverage dies down.

[Cutter]

I think he is the only winner here; I suppose in theory there could be some advantage in having a link on the site simply because of all the incoming links it has. Now I'm suprised GoldenPalace hasn't just bought the whole thing already..

[r2d2]

Yes, I think he will be the only winner, and fair play to him for dreaming it up, and making it happen.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I saw this 2 or 3 days ago and there must be 4 or 5 times as much space sold now as there was then.

(Is that a crasy monkey in the top - perhaps Westech can tell us if it is a worthwhile place to advertise?)

[MarkB]

I saw that a week or so ago; great idea, and I think for the people who're paying to be part of it, it's more an excercise in supporting nutty ideas. That kinda thing's been missing on the web for too long :)

[AndyH]

First time i've seen this. Wish I thought of it.

[MarkB]

I've seen some others trying similar things (mainly just 'Send me $1, just for the sake of it!' - that guy's made $2 in a month. Ha!), but not with the style this guy shows.

[LuckyShima]

It sure is filling up. Last time I looked he said he made $10,000 a day for two days running and fell asleep at his desk.

Here is a copy, not sure if this one has caught any suckers yet:

http://www.milliondollarwebpage.com/

[chromate]

There's no point in releasing exactly the same thing. I'm surprised that copy-cat site has made any money at all. The only reason the original site done so well is because, well, it's an original idea and it got a lot of press coverage.

Now I'm waiting for someone to take the idea a step further somehow. Perhaps having 10 100k pixel grids each representing a different industry sector or something :)

[Kate]

Very nice idea. I envy that guy.

[Westech]

(Is that a crasy monkey in the top - perhaps Westech can tell us if it is a worthwhile place to advertise?)

Yes, that's a crazy monkey at the top. Good eyes. :)

It's sending me a good bit of traffic, but certainly not enough to return my investment through the direct clickthroughs. I didn't really expect it to. I do think it's good for increasing awareness of my brand, and I'm hoping that a lot of the people who click through will become return visitors to my site.

Also, like Mark said, I like to support nutty ideas. I think that this type of advertising is really cool. There's a whole different strategy to consider when you're competing with so many other ads for the users' attention and you have so little space to work with:

How many "blocks" to buy?

What colors to use?

Where on the page should the ad be for maximum effectiveness at the beginning when the whole page is relatively empty?

How about torwards the end when the page is full?

I just really love the idea of trying to grab the someone's attention and get them to click using only a 10x10 or 40x40 space when you're surrounded by tons of other ads trying to do the same thing.

On another note, since placing the ad I've received 3 emails through the contact form on my site asking me to advertise on other copy-cat sites. I won't give them any free publicity by linking to them here. I guess they figure that that page is a free directory of suckers to market to. They may be right, but at least come up with something halfway original first!

[MarkB]

Nice one! :) I'm thinking of getting a single block myself - if he does indeed keep it there for however long he's promised, then $100 isn't much. Especially since it should remain an indexed page. *shrug* :)

[chromate]

Wow, $149,400 sold! Major increase since the last time I looked. This guy must be loving this! :) He'll be able to buy a small house or flat soon and cross rent off his student expenses. haha

[MarkB]

Yeah. Man, I hate that guy... :)

[John]

Every time I go back and look at the page there are more blocks filled, it's amazing how much some sites are spending.

[John]

Theres even geocities site in there :) :)

[chromate]

Anyone reckon he'll reach a million? That would be incredible.

[Cutter]

I think if he got some coverage in the Wall Street Journal or on some big TV shows he could. He may have already, I don't know. I think if he gets close he could spin it as "buy the last spots on this page."

[James]

I was told by my brother's girlfriend, that she saw it on television.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

It was featured in the Gaurdian (one of the main uk papers) on Saturday .

[MarkB]

He'll hit the million, no doubt.

[chromate]

I think if he got some coverage in the Wall Street Journal or on some big TV shows he could. He may have already, I don't know. I think if he gets close he could spin it as "buy the last spots on this page."

Yeah, I was thinking, either it would slow down, or companies would be more keen to grab the last few spaces while they can.

[ozgression]

Looks like this type of advertising is really taking off. eg. http://www.nevblog.com/

[chromate]

I think it will be short lived. Let's face it, once the hype is over, it's not a great advertising medium. I wouldn't buy any space on any of them. Still a nice wacky idea though :)

[Westech]

Of course the traffic level will decrease significantly once the hype wears off, but I think that the original milliondollarhomepage will always keep some level of traffic just because of the links it's gathered and random people interested in checking it out over the next few years.

All of the imitators are probably destined for failure, but might make a few bucks along the way simply by annoying people. I receive a new email almost every day now from a new imitation site saying, "I noticed you advertised on milliondollarhomepage.com. Would you like to advertise on my copycat site? I think it will be even more successful and here are the BS reasons why...." :rolleyes:

In other news, the traffic for milliondollarhomepage has continued to steadily grow and so have the clicks it's been sending me: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=milliondollarhomepage.com

[r2d2]

He's nearly half way ($474,400) now: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

[MarkB]

He was on BBC morning news last week. Seemed rather smarmy.

[chromate]

Didn't see it. But the attention's probably gone to his head. Half a million dollars in the space of a couple of months! Makes for a straaaaaaaange tax situation I bet :)

[James]

Makes for a straaaaaaaange tax situation I bet
Haha I didn't even consider that, but I'd say that he'll probably get screwed out of a lot of that money.

[chromate]

Yep. This is one case where a seriously good accountant would be required!

[John]

With all the press this has been getting you know the government is just waiting to sink their teeth into his profits, maybe he should of set his company up as a charity since it's for his education...

[MarkB]

It'd only be for his education up until it covers the cost of his tuition. After that, it's money for beer and weed LOL Knowing the UK gov't, they'll find some way of shafting him ;)

[Blue Cat Buxton]

It will be 40% tax thank you very much (give or take, and mostly take!).

Gordon Brown rubs hands in glee.

[jlorfing]

There are a bunch of knockoffs to the million dollar home page, but it looks like people are starting to get more creative with it. http://www.daniel.org/blog/?p=363 lists possible new features, such as zooming, and http://www.mikimap.com allows short animations and mouseover sounds on their pixels.

Do you think this might turn into a new marketing technique as people start adding more and better features?

[r2d2]

I think only the first one will get any traffic. Any others will have to have something majorly new to get any press attention which is what made the first one successful.

[Chris]

Exactly... it was the press attention and the novelty of this that made it successful.

[chromate]

Do you think this might turn into a new marketing technique as people start adding more and better features?

Not a chance. People are paying to advertise and the only way they will get a return on their investment is from people looking at their ads. The only reason people were looking at the ads on milliondollarhomepage is the media attention.

If someone adapted it to such an extent that it got similar levels of media attention, then it might work for them. But it'll never be a new mainstream marketing technique because no one really wants to look at a page of ads. Just take a look at it - it's like a page of spam! :) But good on him!

Check out the current price on ebay for those last 1k pixels!... http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5652179487&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:UK:31

[Cutter]

The only thing I could imagine.. is if a site owner auctioned off the ad inventory in a large header of their site or a sidebar. By selling it in units it would give smaller advertisers to get impressions for a fraction of the price while ensuring all the inventory was sold. However, I'm skeptical about the amount of value you can get out of buying 100 pixels of advertising space. Its a struggle to get clickthroughs now of days even if you have purchased an entire banner. Additionally, large spenders may not want their ads right up against some other company's ads.

However, as far as the "permanent" part of the idea goes, no. I can see an advertiser buying ad inventory long-term like is currently done on the futures market, but "forever", just doesn't make any sense. Hell, with MSN being sold out for the next 16 months or so this could make sense. This would also be a way for website owners to limit their risk if there is an economic downturn in the future which resulted in a slower advertising market. Of course, there would be a trade-off in profits in a strong market upswing. Right now its pretty clear that internet advertising is experiencing a sharp upswing so this idea probably wouldn't be too attractive until there was some sort of wide-spread economic uncertainty.

Hahah, I think I just really went off topic in that last paragraph.

[Mariah592]

First time i've seen this.

I liked the first idea much better. Think about it





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