From Ananova:
Skint student's $1m brainwave
An internet brainwave has put a skint student on the way to becoming a millionaire in just four months.
Alex Tew planned to pay off fees on his degree course with his web page - made up of 10,000 tiny advert boxes.
But the idea took off so fast he is set to reach his target of $1million - £566,861 - by Christmas Day, reports the Mirror.
Firms buy a box on www.milliondollarhomepage.com for $100 (£57) which then directs users to their own website.
Alex, 21, of Cricklade, Wilts, England, said: "I have always been skint."
A few weeks ago I read an interview with Mr Tew, in which he explained that the idea came to him one evening that he could make a million pounds if he could get a million people to pay a pound for an advertising space. He went to sleep and in the morning it still seemed like good idea, so he created the milliondollar website. A few weeks later, the cash was pouring into his student account.
Since it is the season of goodwill, I will only say well done to young Alex for his brilliantly simple business idea.
At any other time I would curse him for being a thoroughly jammy little git.
2 comments:
Yes, good for him.
I wouldn't have guessed that 10,000 advertisers would think that a small box among 10,000 other boxes was worth $ 100 - which is why I'm not a millionaire, I suppose.
I certainly wouldn't pay $ 100 for it, that much money would get a MUCH better response from doing Google ads, in my opinion.
Which makes me wonder, is he getting the money up-front, or are advertisers merely promising to pay, if certain criteria are met ?
Apparently they're paying up front.
I think the benefit for the advertisers is that he's getting a lot of publicity in news stories for the neatness of the idea, and for the personal angle of the broke student getting rich quick.
I doubt that copycat pages would have anything like the same appeal, since the format is, as you suggest, not really much cop.
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