Young Entrepreneur turns simple idea into hundreds of thousands of dollars

Alex Tew, 21-year-old British business management student has made enough money to fund his way through University studies and several times over by selling get this $339,500 US dollars worth of pixels at one dollar per pixel on his website, http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com, which he launched just nearly eight weeks ago.  The first few weeks of October, netted him nearly $200,000 or $195,000 to be more accurate. 

His website, The Million Dollar Homepage, offers companies and entrepreneurs the chance to buy one 10X10-pixel block for $100 US dollars, which can be used to display an image/ad or logo, together with a link to their site as long as its not obscene or offensive.

The pixels you buy will be displayed on the homepage permanently for the life of the site. The creator, Tew, hopes to keep the site running for at least five years, but hopefully much longer with the ultimate goal of making it “a kind of internet time capsule”.

He concedes that starting up the project required a boost from a family member, who was prepared to float the idea to encourage ‘real’ customers to pay up.  With the blogging phenomenon, spreading his website like wildfire users came, advertisers followed.

"I knew Alex would pester me about it, but if it catches people's attention, then it's worth having my logo on there," said brother Will, whose go-Karting venture was the first to advertise on Million Dollar.

More recent advertisers include a entertainment portal, online casinos, and newspapers.  Tew, says "Each ad on the homepage is averaging over 5,000 clicks per week." Tew explained, "One company even doubled their online sales as a direct result of buying my pixels."

The success of Million Dollar Homepage has spawned dozens of copycat sites that will undoubtedly do nowhere near as well as Alex’s because of the originality of the site.  Alex's site has exploded into nearly the top 1,000 websites, according to Alexa.com web traffic ranking, making it one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet right after BritneySpears.com.

Tew, is due in the United States in November for a press and media tour, including radio and television appearances in NYC, LA, San Francisco and Chicago to name a few.

Responding to what he might do if he reaches his target earnings of $1m, with cash to spare, Tew revealed: “After covering the cost of my degree I'd like to pay for my parents to have some time off, because they work really hard and deserve a break. Then I have some business ideas in the pipeline that I'd like to invest in.”

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