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Blackmailers try to black out Million Dollar Homepage
January 18, 2006
The Million Dollar Homepage started as gamble on the public's fascination with quirky Web sites and turned into a global phenomenon, making an unlikely celebrity of its founder.
Now Tew is turning his attention to creating something more long-term.
Everybody says that everything that can be done with the Internet has already been done but that's simply not true, he said.
"The challenge really for me now is to find out how I can take the phenomenal success of the Million Dollar Homepage and replicate that in order to create a sustainable business model," he said. "I can't just do The Million Dollar Homepage 2."
Tew was attending the Second Chance Tuesday networking event in London and said he already has had a lot of interest from investors. And though he isn't revealing many details, he said there are a number of ventures already in the planning stage. And he understands they will have to be a lot more credible than The Million Dollar Homepage.
"In order to get serious funding, you have to come up with a real business plan," he said.
Tew would divulge only that his ideas are entirely focused on the Internet--a medium he believes is ripe for a second major boom. Tew had barely started senior school in the U.K. when the first dot-com boom came along.
"I kind of wish I was 10 years older," he said. "If I'd been around in 1996, '97, '98 I'd have been so excited. A lot of the best companies were founded then: Amazon, eBay, Google. Though I still believe there is so much more that can be done.
"In 10 years' time what is going to exist that doesn't exist now? You have to open your mind and you have to keep on having ideas and you have to persist with them, and if you get knocked down you have to get up and go for it again."
Tew said he's aware of the dozens of Web sites looking to copy the successful format of The Million Dollar Homepage but said they'll have little success "because it's already been done."
"That just shows how uninventive people are," he said, adding that it mirrors the reasons why the dot-com bubble bursting was so much worse than it should have been; markets that could sustain one successful business model were often flooded with dozens of imitators looking to replicate it with no added-value of their own.
Inevitably, those jumping on the bandwagon failed and added to the dot-com death count. And Tew predicts a similar fate for the copycat home page sites.
Will Sturgeon of Silicon.com reported from London.
See more CNET content tagged:
Alex Tew, dot-com, business model, founder, venture
Might be a different enough concept to make it it's own, but still using pixel advertising as a revenue model.
We have a version focussed on Web2.0 Companies - Own your piece of Web2.0 History!
http://www.web20milliondollarhomepage.com
www.CopyCatCash.com
Viva Alex!
Try to help someone else needs you
Please review http://milliondollarhomepage2.com
Be appreciate your comment.
Joe
As i missed the first round, i will be signing my site to round 2.
MillionDollarHomePage2.com page takes a different approach not pixels but categories to be filled with a solitary link, which shows the buy price in dollars.
You bid, get accepted and are linked.
People can buy your category and essentially buy your space, your are provided in return your initial investment + 10% for no return link sites or + 50% if you provided a link to homepage.
This is similar to potsie scheme. Though at the end it will reach a price no one else is willing to pay and the highest bidder will have a permanent link.
Best of luck to Joe Chang on his venture. You deserve it just for procurring the name.
Regards,
Eamonn Smyth.
When the MillionDollarHomepage launched, its unique idea captured the media?s interest and generated lots of traffic to the site and where?s traffic advertising usually follows. The site got a phenomenal amount of traffic and in less than 5 short months managed to sell entire one million pixels.
However, as the media hype slowed down, the web site becomes silent and seems unable to keep visitors returning. In fact, its current Alexa ranking rapidly falling to 8,024 from 679 since last year. The future of MillionDollarHomePage is doubtful.
It is a brilliant idea for providing advertisers with an economically viable advertising model. But that is not enough. To survive the MillionDollarHomePage needs something more, something that will keep visitors returning. Unfortunately, neither the MillionDollarHomePage nor most of the copy cat sites as far as I know can come up with something more valuable.
ChinaDotCom.biz is the first site that I am aware of that has integrated a pixel page (called Pixel adBoard) into an established business portal. They are offering the opportunity for more targeted pixel advertising with sustainable membership base. As they got over 330,000 product categories and trade leads from their members for visitors to browse, it secured sustainable sources of traffic for their advertisers. It also secured a long term return on investment for the advertisers.
In my opinion, the MillionDollarHomePage?s idea only works one time and cannot be copied except for those sites with sustainable sources of traffic like ChinaDotCom.biz (if interested, go to http://chinadotcom.biz). Remember -- content is king. What do you think?
I?d like to hear from you.
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- by Phil952 January 27, 2009 8:37 AM PST
- http://www.depixelateme.com is a similar idea - buy pixels, but instead of advertising you're rewarded with an image of the owner of the website.. without clothes on. Oh, and the owner is female.
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