Comments

Hey - it was just one of those opportunistic gimmicks by a student needing money. I was too slow to get in on it myself - but it was a great ice-breaker for conversations. It truly is part of the "nanosecond" world and exactly matches TP's "seize the moment" mantra. I would count it a great $100. marketing investment - much better than all the multiple thousands of dollars a previous employer of mine threw away on ....

Posted by Mike L at January 20, 2006 4:28 PM

This is innovation on the Internet. A young man with an idea who took the action step. It's not necessarily creating something new, but using existing concepts differently. Unfortunately, sometimes innovation on the Internet fails to provide lasting value. But hey, he's a college kid. Fair play to him! He shouldn't be expected to change the world. He just wanted some beer money - and now he has some.

It is good to see young people taking a concept and actually implementing it - taking a risk.

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 20, 2006 5:22 PM

How is proper Internet advertising through other major outlets any better than this scheme? Give the guy credit for coming up with a scheme and making $1mm on it.

Posted by vinod at January 20, 2006 5:23 PM

There are these few instances when crazy, unheard of, even wrong/ineffective activities gets the attention of a lot of people. The Million Dollar Homepage is one of them.

The objective of getting your message across to your customers (in this case through a wall of ads) is ineffective but the temptation of being part of something (borrowing from Seth Godin) purple is too much to resist.

The only thing I'm sure of aside from the fact that Alex Tew is a millionaire, is that it's not going to happen again... maybe not in the next 10 years.

Posted by Dennis Balajadia at January 20, 2006 11:33 PM

I think Alex Tew did a great job for himself. I have no complaints against him, and he deserves every penny. He marketed his scheme brilliantly.

My accusatory spotlight is shining on the marketers who thought this was a gerat way for them to advertise. Alex Tew is the only one who did what he did, and he stood out. All of the advertisers did what all the other advertisers did, and they buried themselves in the clutter.

Posted by Steve Yastrow at January 21, 2006 1:14 AM

Let's get real here, guys...

By any reasonable stretch (and not much of a stretch is required) of a thinking person's imagination... overall, the thing is dumb.

It does almost nought to add to the wealth of knowledge in circulation or provide good example to others.

Yastrow is right to call it for what it is - 'crap'. Good for him.

Posted by gulliver at January 21, 2006 8:15 AM

I wrote something about this a week or so ago - before the litigation started - which as got about 700 - 1000 hits (though admittedly only one comment):

http://danielmarkharrison.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/01/who_wants_to_be.html

I think it summarises fairly well the 'con-trick' aspect you talk about not only related to The Million Dollar Homepage but to online advertising in general.

Posted by Daniel M. Harrison at January 21, 2006 8:15 AM

Billion Dollar cyber dream - that seems to be moi destination and adventure ... Million after Tew litigation costs may = - $1 Million ...

Posted by Sean at January 21, 2006 10:26 AM

Alex represents the power of the web-the advertisers had glowing reports of traffic before the melt down. More importantly, Alex had the brass to think & implement an idea. There are plenty more opportunities for those willing to try something different! :)

Posted by Steve Mertz at January 21, 2006 2:03 PM

We need to apploud Alex; with his innovative idea, he has done a great job for taking everybody's attention, showing and proving not just saying! to many people how can you be so simple and make a fortune and as a result; earning incredible amount of money in just 4 months. Just look out for the testimonials and the hundreds of copycat sites following his lead.

He will now be facing greater challenges though since he stated that "this is just a start, I have more ideas to follow". For his next move, he has a greater opportunity to be seen as a "hero", rather than just a "smart college kid", if he finds another innovative way for "giving back" some earnings to the needed ones (i.e. fund raising) or taking some large companies behind him to promote or lead some "corporate social responsibility" projects. There are lots of cases where many rich corporates with the feeling that they ought to do something to give back some of their earnings back to the society waste their money and get nothing in return due to poor planing or ignorance.

Lets see if Alex will come up with another creative yet simple idea which will become a win-win-win all around (rich but ignorant corporates-actual beneficiaries of a such project- and himself of course!).

Tunc
www.atolye.blogspot.com

Posted by Tunc at January 21, 2006 5:36 PM

Steve - here's a conundrum. The general view is, "hats off to Alex Tew because he's shown inititative and made money." You praise him for the way he marketed the idea. But the view you seem to have (and which I share) is that it was a bad concept to buy into - it made Alex money but was a lousy site for marketers to use.

So why are we praising a guy who has an idea which is basically: give me money for an advertising space that doesn't offer any significant return for you? People who purchased space are pretty much giving their money away. They don't seem to have purchased anything here of any real value.

I just get a very uncomfortable feeling that the guy has sold us snake-water and we're all saying, "Hey - he's made himself a pot of money and that's all that matters."

Posted by Mark J Foscoe at January 22, 2006 6:09 AM

The guy has done well. I will only admire him however if he can come up with a different but equally effective scheme every few years.

If this type of thing is a trend then I am concerned - if it is (as I suspect) a one off like a novelty hit record then big deal. If your only concept is novelty then you have to be pretty damn creatinve to pull that off several times.

Posted by PaulH at January 22, 2006 7:35 AM

Mark, true - it's obviously not a long lasting or significant advertising channel; but the cost for advertising on the site was nominal, and warranted the investment. I'm sure that the same advertisers sponsor many non-revenue-generating channels during the year, and for much more money than they spent on this campaign.

Many marketers, I would imagine, jumped on board to be part of the wave. They could churn some good PR out of it by saying that their decision was made simply to support the young student and reward his entrepreneurial efforts. A good marketer would continue the wave by publishing an interview with the young man and distributing it as a podcast on their site.

And who knows - it would be interesting to see the analysis of click-through rates from the page. I imagine that they wouldn't be too far below industry averages for a website. A 6% click-through rate isn't bad - and if the site succeeded in driving traffic (simply out of curiosity), then it is very possible that even a lower percentage of click-throughs would drive significant traffic to advertiser sites.

As a marketer, the minimal investment for the campaign would certainly be an incentive to me - just for the possibility that the story would carry, as it has. Better than spending 1000 times that for a hyperlink burried on some lackluster industry portal site.

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 22, 2006 10:39 AM

My hat is off for the guy

Posted by balazs attila at January 22, 2006 2:35 PM

I was speculating about the motivation for the advertisers too:

1) If someone happens to click on your ad it's probably more by accident than by choice. The site gets quite a bit of traffic. A small click-through-rate (CTR) with a lot of traffic might still result in some new visitors on your site.

2) I guess it might work for more of a technical reason. Search engines use links to derive a notion of importance and authority for a site. Simplified: More inbound links = higher position in the search results. Some of the search engines look at this network of links over several nodes. The outbound links of a site with a lot of inbound links (like The Million Dollar Homepage) might get a higher weight than others. If that's true than buying one pixel with a link behind might already be enough to boost your ranking.

Two things are important to mention:
- Search engines are now punishing obvious attempts to game their system. A page like The Million Dollar Homepage that contains nothing but links might be considered abusive and therefore punished. The same might apply to the sites linked from there.
- The Million Dollar Homepage uses an image map for the links. The search engine spiders and bots have historically had problems interpreting these maps or have decided to ignore them. I don't know what the current status is.

Posted by Dave at January 22, 2006 9:40 PM

Well thought out Dave. I don't think that any advertisers on the site expected it to be a recurring click-through stream though. They just jumped on a narly wave, knowing that the wave would crash after it reached it's apex. The investment was nominal, so the risk was easy to absorb.

Regarding the SEO of the site itself, search engines don't really come into the equation. The site was marketed by the momentum of its PR value and its brand (million dollar homepage) and doesn't require much SEO to be effective. It comes up top on Google when searchers use the sting "million dollar homepage".

I think that the site looks cool. If he was smart, he'd sell framed prints of it on the site. It would make for nice art (it's very Andy Warhol!)

Like he says on the top of the page. Be a part of Internet history. The advertisers who supported the site were. The doubting Thomas' out there need to loosen their belts a bit and wonder why they didn't fork over one dollar per pixel -

For 30 dollars, you'd have an ad that stands out from the crowd, on a site that has received more visitors than well developed, SEO intensive sites.

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 23, 2006 5:53 AM

This thread is beginning to remind me of that old statement: "I know that half my advertising spend is wasted, I just don't know which half!"

Posted by Mark J Foscoe at January 23, 2006 6:26 AM

It was a curiosity, simple as that. That's why the site worked, because people heard about this guy doing his site, and went to have a look at it.

I don't know if advertisers made money, but in the end, it's not a long term idea.

I've heard of people thinking this is a great model, but it's not. It's a gimmick that's now over. Move on.

No-one is going to keep visiting a site that is comprised mostly of the sort of advertisers that we spend our time trying to filter out of our email. Advertising only works where there is content to drive people to it.

Posted by Tim Almond at January 23, 2006 8:37 AM

Spot on Tim. Effective advertising is based on one word: Relevance. If it ain't there, it ain't effective.

That said, any effective marketing campaign utilizes many different vehicles and streams. This was an example of effective PR more than it was an effective advertising channel. Good marketers walk down many different avenues. The Million Dollar Homepage got notice from marketers because there was a big party on that particular avenue at the time. And they know that no party lasts forever. People eventually get tired.

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 23, 2006 9:25 AM

The whole idea was a great ploy. I don't see how buying an ad on this site is good marketing. I am sorry I think you need to have a little more respect for your brand.
First of all, try finding your ad.
Secondly,what does it say to be next to Casinos, hosting sites, etc.

I mean seriously, the only funny thing here is that this kid conned everyone into giving him a million dollars. Now that I tell you is Great marketing.

If you think anybody will remember your brand/ad from that page, obviously your barking up the wrong tree. Take your $20, $50, $100 spend it on search and attract a few more people to your site, who might actually be interested in looking for products from you.

Posted by Tony at January 23, 2006 12:18 PM

Tony, I think that you, and many others are taking it a bit too seriously. Marketing campaigns cross all kinds of lines, many of which are not traditional in the sense of revenue streams. Sponsoring local sports teams, homework clubs, etc. are some examples. I doubt if any advertisers or marketers thought that their brand would be significantly bolstered or bashed by taking part in the event. It was just one of those fun, news-worthy Internet events that happen from time to time. I mean, you couldn't buy lunch with the money it cost to have a 10 pixel presence on the site. What it shows, more than anything, is the new approach to monetization that the Internet is offering. Low cost, high volume - in this case it's an extreme example, but it makes one think of how offering a 1 dollar e-book to hundreds of thousands may be as effective as trying to push a 99.99 dollar book to fewer customers.

Simply plopping the pixel ads on the page, in itself, isn't great marketing. What is, is being part of the buzz, being creative in how your sponsorship stands out in amongst the million pixels (you can see how some were much more creative than others.) and perhaps even getting some mileage after the wave crashes. Earlier, I gave an example of conducting a podcast interview with the site owner and getting traffic to your site from people interested in listening to it. Obviously, there are many other creative ways to get more mileage...if you wanted to.

But, the point is, the pixels cost one dollar each. Why not drop a tenner to support it. I personally clicked-through on several ads on the page and ended up on an advertisers site. If the site was relevant to me that would have been a sale for them (or a return visit anyway). Personally, I found the largest Oriental Kosher Food Supplier in the World on the site (www.imofood.com), and there's the buzz. Now the site is on Tom Peters blog.

Nobody is saying that The Million Dollar Homepage is a marketers dream. It was never intended to be a stream for marketers - just a bit of fun that received good PR.

Spend 20 or 50 on search? Sure, do that too. It won't be much more effective, but hey, use all of the ovens available to make a lot of bread. It's not an all-or-nothing game that we play.

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 23, 2006 12:45 PM

David Pogue in the NYTimes published a great list on How to Be a Curmudgeon on the Internet. Many of his points are made in looking at recent comments on this site.

In addition to his I'll add: Never look at the name of the person who wrote the post before you launch into criticism, but automatically assume it was the site's main blogger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/technology/circuits/19POGUE-EMAIL.html

Posted by Kirk at January 23, 2006 1:08 PM

Great piece Kirk! Thanks for the link.

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 23, 2006 4:06 PM

If I was the kind of person who bought pixel ads, and let me stress I'm not because it's so untargeted, I might go for something like companybattleships.com which seems to have some quite nice programming behind it and is doing well on Google for "pixels for sale" and "buy pixels".

Posted by geek-pie at January 23, 2006 4:25 PM

I think it's a stupid idea too. BUT... the site has a Google Pagerank of 7, quite rare, and usually of high value to search engine optimizers. There are some who pay $2-300 per MONTH for a link from a PR7 site. So $100 is actually a bargain.

On the other hand, with that many outbound links, the value of the page is diluated considerably. And given its publicity Google may be discounting it internally.

Posted by Derek Scruggs at January 24, 2006 4:38 PM

Great idea!

Posted by Mr Piggy Bank at January 24, 2006 6:51 PM

There seems to be a lot of commenting here about whether this is smart marketing or not for the advertisers, but not from the people who actually advertised. We did, and for the $100 and 12 minutes it cost, it got the effect I wanted:

a) a test of a link mechanism that was trackable
b) a few clicks to the site
c) a new link for SEO purposes

The true test of effective advertising isn't relevance. Duh. It's whether it has positive ROI. This one did.

Sanjay Singhal
VP Marketing
Simply Audiobooks Inc.
www.simplyaudiobooks.com

Posted by Sanjay Singhal at January 25, 2006 9:35 AM

Long term marketing success certainly involves relevance to your market Sanjay. That doesn't mean that advertising to non-targeted audiences won't be effective - as your own case proves.

The Million Dollar Homepage was effective because of the PR it received, not because it was a strong advertising or marketing channel; and I think that anyone who took advantage of the low investment/high potential exposure from the campaign was smart.

Good brands are exposed to all markets, and are recognizable across all channels by mass audiences.

So what if traffic to the Million Dollar Homepage will fade when its newsworthiness withers? Like you said, the ROI on the minimal effort and cost required will be met before then. And even if the ROI is lackluster, it was worth the risk, if only to be involved in an Internet event that garnered so much attention.

Fair play to you and the others who got involved!

Posted by Tom O'Leary at January 25, 2006 10:21 AM

Hi,

I disagree with your conclusions, for the following reasons:

1. The whole advertising model on the Internet is based on the assumption that “targeting” is the same as “context”. For example, the assumption is that if a user searches for briefcases, a briefcase advertisement must be served, because the user is most likely to click on that advertisement.

2. What is ignored in Point 1, is the fact that the user will click on an advertisement if it interests him, EVEN IF it is in no way relevant to the context.

Originally, this is how advertising used to work, but with the advent of Adwords etc, this fact is being forgotten. For example, If I am a Soccer fan, I will click on Soccer Ads, even if they show up when I am searching for something else.

3. What is also ignored in Point 1, is the fact that there is a “Curiosity” element when ppl click on ANYTHING. The Million Dollar Homepage concept is testimony for this fact. Sometimes, ppl click on ads just because they are curious. Is there something BIG here that everyone has managed to ignore?

As an experiment, based on the Million Dollar Homepage Concept, we are trying to build a Compendium of Web2.0 companies, in Pixels, at http://www.web20milliondollarhomepage.com/.

The idea is simple: it will prove if Point 3 listed above is a huge market waiting to be tapped.

Do have a look, and let us know what you think.

Posted by Srinivasan at January 26, 2006 12:46 AM

It was a good idea, gained lots of media coverage, and now its completed, the owner achieved his goal, he's a million dollars richer and now its time to put this Pixel baby to rest. All the copycat sites trying to piggyback need to realise one thing, the first will always be remembered, all the rest are imitations ...

Posted by Juilette at January 27, 2006 7:19 PM

[Opportunistic gimmicks - dumb - crap - con trick - snake-water - ploy - con - untargeted - stupid idea...]

What a sad bunch of experts you are and even more shame on those of you for rubbing the palms of your hands together at the thought of litigation against Alex.

It was original, innovative, it had never been done, it stands.

Have any of you ever had this much impact in your field in such a short amount of time, on such a low budget? I doubt it.

The first time I heard about Alex and his page was fairly early on. How? My Mum cut out an article in the paper and saved it for me. My Mum has never even used a computer!

This simple idea has cut through ROI’s, advertising models, SEO optimization and common sense.

Congratulations Alex

Posted by Noel at January 30, 2006 12:30 PM

Alex's page was brilliant of course. I've been reviewing many of the million dollar sites and so far, the one that caught my attention was http://www.officialmilliondollarwebpage.com/ .... as it was nicely designed, although the interface could use a little brushup.

Good luck to the creators, I hope they pay off all their student loans with this site. If it were only so easy...

:) Snowy B

Posted by Snowy Barnscene at February 2, 2006 4:29 AM