Two months ago, Alex Tew was an ordinary 21-year old, "saddled with an overdraft" and facing three debt-ridden years at university, says The Guardian. Then he had an idea. One website, and a little publicity later, and he's richer to the tune of $200,000 and hopes to net at least $1m by the time he graduates. By anyone's reckoning, it's been quite a start to Freshers' Week.
Midnight oil
The genesis of Tew's Million Dollar Home Page website took place on a balmy August night at Tew's parents' house in Wiltshire, says The Times. "I've always been an ideas kind of person and I like to brainstorm at night before I go to sleep," he says. The issue he faced, as he contemplated starting a business management course at Nottingham University, was how to avoid the fate of an older brother, who'd graduated £30,000 in the red.
"So I wrote down: How can I become a millionaire before I go to university?' It was rather an ambitious question, but I went with it." He then wrote down the attributes his plan would need: it had to be simple to understand and to set up; it had to attract a lot of media interest; and it needed a good name. After that, "the idea just popped into my head".
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How it works
His scheme was indeed "brilliantly simple", says The Birmingham Post. He would create a web page, containing exactly one million pixels (the tiny dots that make up an image on the screen), divide the space into 10,000 square blocks of 100 pixels each, and sell blocks to advertisers for a fee of $100. Clicking on an advertisement automatically takes anyone visiting his site to an advertiser's home-page. Essentially, it was no more than a notice-board, "and things started pretty slowly". Alex's brother bought $400 worth of space, just to help things along.
But once sales topped £1,000, he used the money to pay for a press release. The story was picked up by the BBC - and in turn by the US network broadcasters, and then "went viral" across the internet. Tew sped things along by telling advertisers they could help a young British student go to university. That captured imaginations. In the first four weeks, he sold over 200,000 pixels at $1 each.
The pixel king
The extraordinary success of the site "took everyone by surprise", says The Guardian. The internet tracker, Alexa.com, rates it "the world's third fastest-growing website". Even so, the "fresh-faced, spiky-haired live wire" is taking it all in his stride, says The Times. "I've always had a knack for making money and I always knew I wanted to live on my wits," he says. He made his first profit aged eight, selling home-made comics at school.
Even so, isn't raking in £500 an hour rather extraordinary? "Criminal isn't it?" says Tew, sipping a Coke in the student union bar. "It's like Monopoly money." So far, he's only shelled out on several pairs of new socks - he intends to put the bulk of the cash towards new ventures - although he might buy a Mini. "I don't want anything stupid like a BMW."
It may be a brilliantly simple idea - but can it last?
The companies Tew managed to attract to his site at www.milliondollarhomepage.com are "a diverse and eclectic bunch", says The Guardian. They range from gambling sites, through anti-war blogs, to a UK family law practice, a Dutch sailing company and a South Florida limo service. "We say no to all the adult sites," says Tew. Crucial to the site's early success was the fact that it priced space in dollars - attracting international business - and its memorable name. Indeed, the name is so crucial to the plan's success, reckons Adweek, that without it "the plan would have failed".
Even so, asks The Times, what attracted all these disparate companies? The idea was "brilliant in its simplicity," says Professor Martin Binks of Nottingham University's Institute for Entrepreneurial Innovation. "Advertisers were attracted by its novelty and by the curiosity factor".
And success bred success. People buying have realised the site has "become a phenomenon" that "makes the advertising good value for money". One new client is Chris Magras, chief of Arizona-based Engineseeker.com, which helps clients' websites appear at the top of internet search engines. He bought 6,400 pixels. "The results were amazing: we used to get 40,000 visitors a day - that's now up to 60,000."
Most experts expect the traffic will eventually wear off, says Adweek, not least because the site has already spawned a welter of copycats. "Tew is OK with that": he believes they'll struggle to repeat his "actual pull in terms of advertising dollars". Besides, he's got other ventures up his sleeve. Watch this space.
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