

The Million Dollar Homepage (2005) - tomthorns
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

======
gavd
I was the developer who wrote the PHP that this site ran on. I knew Alex from
Humanbeatbox.com - we were both beatboxers (known as A-Plus and BeatMuppet)
who met at some jams. One night he rang me up saying that he had this site and
it was getting a bit out of hand!

Initially he was managing the orders himself and manually updating the site,
but as the media coverage grew and the traffic picked up, it was no longer
manageable. I wrote a simple system to add, remove and move the pixels and
helped with the orders.

Eventually, he had to take a couple of other people on to help with the orders
- it really was a media storm as Alex was on TV and stuff!

It was a crazy few weeks but I'm very glad to have been a part of this!

~~~
IlPeach
do you know what happened after that? did it hold for long, or was it like a
couple of months adventure? but mostly.... what about the money?

~~~
gavd
Well, once the site had filled up, there was not really any more demand. Ean
and myself, who were doing the orders, went off to do other things. I was
working a full time job at the time as well, so that was kind of a relief,
because even at 25 years old, 16 hour days take their toll!

I'm English and typically squeamish about money but suffice to say, the site
really did make a million dollars (before tax). Alex paid me generously for my
services and it paid for a good chunk of the deposit on my house!

Alex has gone on to do a lot of cool stuff. I'm currently principal software
developer at Box UK and involved with tech meetups and open source. Oh, I do
still rock the human beatbox!

~~~
vermontdevil
Awesome. I remember when this came out and it was cool.

Thanks for sharing!

------
mixmax
An explanation for those who've never seen this before:

A long long time ago on an Internet far from here a young man had an idea. His
idea was simple but genius. He would make a homepage (as they were called back
then) with a grid of 100 by 100 squares each ten pixels across. Each square
could hold an image 10x10 pixels. One million pixels.

Back when we didn't have retina displays and Stallmann was still young
designers thought 10x10 pixels was plenty to make a pretty picture. You could
then buy a square for one hundred dollars; a dollar a pixel. And if people
clicked on the pretty picture you had made in your square they would be taken
to your homepage. If you had lots of money or worked for one of those new dot-
com's you could buy more than one square so your designer could make a bigger
picture.

Now, you can probably guess why it was called the million Dollar Homepage
(Hint 1000 x 1000 = 1 million), and as you can see all the squares were sold
so the architect reached his goal, won his bet and retreated back to the
matrix to devise new ingenious devious ideas.

 _Edit: changed ten dollars to one hundred dollars - thanks for pointing it
out jgrubb._

~~~
kayoone
This was 2005, so its not that long ago, we already had facebook for example
;) Still the idea was pretty novel and worked, many tried to copy the approach
and failed. Even Alex Tew, the guy behind the site, came back later with a
Photobook and some other pixel based business idea (pixelotto) but couldnt
replicate the success.

~~~
runn1ng
Facebook was a very different site back then. People still used MySpace.
iPhone was still not introduced for 2 years. Apples computers were named iBook
and PowerBook and run on PPC for one more year.

~~~
kayoone
Sure, 8 years is a long time in IT but still. The same year we got the Xbox360
(which is still around) and buzzwords like Web 2.0 and Ajax were all over the
place. Doesnt seem too distant in my memory atleast.

~~~
runn1ng
In 2005, mobile web meant WAP.

~~~
kayoone
In 2005, you could already built sites with Rails and Textmate.

~~~
runn1ng
There was no TextMate 2 though!

------
PaulJoslin
The idea of it was a smart idea, but the real reason for the success was the
marketability of the story behind it.

In a world of internet before everything went viral, this story was just
'crazy enough' to essentially go viral. The concept of a page being worth a
million dollars both in a literal and theoretical sense made this quite a
popular link to share in the initial phase (when the site was empty apart from
a couple of adverts).

This then drove a viral / media engine (including television / radio and word
of mouth) which suddenly actually made the pixels on the page worth something!

Companies now flocked to get adverts on the site which was getting a large
number of genuine traffic / media attention and thus the media cycle continued
(as it was now a profitable, extremely successful site) - this in turn
finished when the page was full and months later everyone lost interest.

Unfortunately, I think many of the copy cat sites didn't understand why this
was successful in the first place. It was a clever new idea, which was likely
to get press attention for being so 'unique' / 'clever' \- the copy cats were
unlikely to ever get the same 'viral' effect, so were never going to become
successful like the original site.

If I remember correctly, even the founder himself tried to spin off a second
site based on the same concept with limited success - mainly because people
had seen it before.

------
forcer
That was my first "business idea". After seeing it take off so rapidly. I
setup first clone in my country and donated all profits to charity. It was not
much, about $2000 in total but I learned a ton of useful stuff which helped me
later to progress to bigger and more profitable things. What I learned back
then is that if something works in one country, you can usually replicate it
with some success elsewhere. I have taken that lesson and most of my successes
in recent years been due to this "copy" strategy.

~~~
garethadams
People remember who did something first, and who did something best. If you're
neither of those people, then try making your ideas faster or better

~~~
jfarmer
Alternatively, if you can't be first in a category then invent a new category
in which you are first.

Who was the first human in space? Who was the second?

Who was the first human to orbit the Earth? Who was the second?

Who was the first human to set foot on the moon? The second? The third?

~~~
jcmoscon
I remember this from a book. Was it 22 immutable laws of marketing?

~~~
jfarmer
Yeah, it's the second law. One of the first marketing books I read that
convinced me marketing wasn't all puffery.

------
Shivetya
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage)

------
wlj
I actually advertised on this when it came out. $100 for the little zebra
print square, top left corner, 2nd row down, "YOUR OWN PHOTO WEBSITE" (just to
the right of 'Bingo').

Was fun to be a part of it going viral at the time.

EDIT: Incidentally, the amount of spam I've received since for clone sites has
been staggering.

------
johnpolacek
Remember One Red Paperclip? That was a good one too (2006)
[http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com](http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com)

------
user24
Forgot all about this. I toyed with the idea of buying some ad space when
there was still some space available. In fact I remember when it was 80% free
still.

I think I'm right in saying he went on to try another iteration of the pixel
idea; [http://www.pixelotto.com](http://www.pixelotto.com)

By his twitter, it seems he's now running an iPhone meditation app at
[http://calm.com](http://calm.com)

~~~
kayoone
Apart from pixelotto he also started onemillionpeople.com which basically was
a photobook where you could buy a place for your own picture. I think
pixelotto had some small success but overall his later "riding the wave" ideas
didnt do to well.

------
pbhjpbhj
[http://validator.w3.org/checklink?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.milli...](http://validator.w3.org/checklink?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.milliondollarhomepage.com%2F&hide_type=all&no_referer=on&depth=&check=Check#results1)

W3 Link Validator.

List of broken links and other issues

There are issues with the URLs listed below. The table summarizes the issues
and suggested actions by HTTP response status code.

Code Occurrences What to do

(N/A) 24 The link was not checked due to robots exclusion rules. Check the
link manually, and see also the link checker documentation on robots
exclusion.

(N/A) 110 The hostname could not be resolved. Check the link for typos.

400 4 This is usually the sign of a malformed URL that cannot be parsed by the
server. Check the syntax of the link.

403 12 The link is forbidden! This needs fixing. Usual suspects: a missing
index.html or Overview.html, or a missing ACL.

404 20 The link is broken. Double-check that you have not made any typo, or
mistake in copy-pasting. If the link points to a resource that no longer
exists, you may want to remove or fix the link.

405 2 The server does not allow HTTP HEAD requests, which prevents the Link
Checker to check the link automatically. Check the link manually.

406 9 The server isn't capable of responding according to the Accept* headers
sent. This is likely to be a server-side issue with negotiation.

500 14 This is a server side problem. Check the URI.

503 1 The server cannot service the request, for some unknown reason.

------
ars
The most interesting thing about this is how many of the links don't go
anywhere anymore.

After a few minutes searching I was only able to find one site that still
worked.

~~~
jaynos
Also interesting is how many links I am afraid to click while at work.

------
gavinjoyce
I purchased one of the first blocks, the Irish flag in the top left. It
brought a steady stream of useless traffic, unsurprisingly.

------
dj64
We are actually creating a page similar to this for our clients. It will be
live in a few days. We had a client directory but couldn't fit everyone on one
page. So we decided to create smaller boxes for each clients. All of our
clients will be on the same page and are encouraged to do business with each
other and promote the page. Remember, hundreds of millions of people have come
online in the past 5-10 years. And the key is not "copying" the exact idea but
learning from and adapting all the models in the marketplace to create new
projects. Ours is already selling but (BUT!)it is because we are already
connected to these people (creatives, business owners, etc.) and we're not out
to create a gimmick but simply to connect clients and friends of clients.

------
aroman
What I don't understand about the idea was why would anyone visit a page full
of ads? Did the owner sign deals with the major browser vendors at the time?

I really, why would anyone _want_ to visit a page with nothing more than
1,000,000 pixels of ads?

~~~
imgabe
Because of the novelty of some unknown person selling pixels for a dollar each
and making a million dollars. I think this was covered on the Today show and
other media outlets IIRC.

------
darrhiggs
Here is another writeup:

[http://www.sexeys.somerset.sch.uk/alumni/alex-
tew](http://www.sexeys.somerset.sch.uk/alumni/alex-tew)

…and our old school is really called Sexey's.

------
keithpeter
I quite liked [http://yournameontoast.com/](http://yournameontoast.com/)

Perhaps because of the manual typography involved and the general silliness.

------
nwh
Almost all of the links in the advertisements seem dead, sadly.

~~~
Jare
On a half-serious note, what longevity did you expect from companies spending
their marketing bucks on stuff like this?

But yeah, links on the internet survive much longer than the sites they point
to; when I am hunting for information on something, I encounter at least one
dead link per hour.

~~~
dasil003
If you were an agency touting expertise in internet memes, a $1600 investment
in 2005 could still be paying a handsome dividend in internet street cred
today.

------
RealGeek
This was an early example of internet crowd funding.

~~~
manuelflara
I don't think so. He just got a bunch of customers to pay for advertisement on
his site. Like any business supported on ads, basically.

~~~
phamilton
True, but you could also say he ran a campaign to crowdfund his education and
offered rewards in the form of pixels.

The lines between crowdfunding, accepting preorders, and just running a
business are fairly blurry.

------
cpeterso
The Million Dollar Homepage was my inspiration for a world homepage: every
person in the world could sign up for "their pixel". each pixel on the page
would be a link to their blog or email address. This idea is more odds a
thought experiment about the scale of one web page than a real site. :)

------
simonebrunozzi
Wow, even the "1000 limited edition poster prints". Crazy. I remember it when
it came out. It was a success because of media attention. It sparkled a "gold
rush" to buy these pixels while they lasted. Sometimes people do crazy things.
:)

------
iliaznk
Oh, yeah... good old days. Then the guy also launched a pixel lotto something
and made another 250K, by the way. Now he's working here
[http://www.calm.com/](http://www.calm.com/)

------
BuddhaSource
Nostalgic!

Btw how did it go viral back then? Curious. Was it cause of his story? Pay for
tuition.

~~~
wlj
The mainstream media, particularly in the UK really picked up on this story at
the time and I would say the 'pay for tuition' component played a big part in
that.

There's an incomplete list of coverage he received on the site [1] but it
doesn't include TV or radio, which was a fair amount too from memory.

[1]
[http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/press.php](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/press.php)

------
samengland
Wow... this seems like yesterday for me. Scary how fast things are moving!

~~~
oceanician
time is indeed flying. even 2001 seems like yesterday for me.

------
kingofspain
At least one of the ads still works. The place I worked at back then jumped on
it early (maybe only 9 or 10 other ads at that point). They paid more for a
few pixels than I earned that month!

~~~
mcargian
My ad still works. Although I always have trouble finding it since it was just
a 10x10.

~~~
conradfr
How many clicks did you get ?

------
xplorer
Man I didn't realize, I am getting old! That was in 2005.... :(

------
alexchamberlain
I remember this and the million and one copies that came after it.

~~~
workbench
Love how a good few of the adverts are just for more pixel ad pages

~~~
praptak
A miniature dot com boom: this company sells so much ad space -> let's be like
them -> need marketing -> let's put an ad on their page!

------
Dusko
I guess not entirely good way to advertise since quite a lot of them are
either non existent or the domain shows something completely different :D

------
jere
Vaguely inspired this site I made:
[http://humbit.com/humbit.php](http://humbit.com/humbit.php)

------
chatmasta
Wow, I was 13 at the time this came out and I feel like it was yesterday. I
guess I really am an internet veteran. :)

------
segmondy
How many of those companies/URLs are still in business? Anyone want to crunch
that out? :-)

------
talmand
Errors found while checking this document as HTML 4.01 Transitional!

Result: 3618 Errors, 3360 warning(s)

------
gscott
I hope his links are rel=nofollow otherwise he might be penalized by Google
(sarcasm)

------
runn1ng
I randomly clicked on three ads and they all led nowhere.

2/10 will not click again

------
level09
what's the catch here ? why would any one pay 100$ for 10x10 area on that
homepage ? was it already having a massive traffic or something ?

------
stwr
But did you guys find Waldo? ;)

------
rnl
I'm 12, what is this

~~~
jqueryin
Other than the Wikipedia page linked above, here's just my two cents:

A guy back in 2005 came up with a get rich quick scheme where he sold 1
million pixels of ad space on his domain to pay for his college education.
You'd pay $1 per pixel of ad space until they were all gone. It got a ton of
hype and was pretty internet-famous for awhile, so the guy did indeed sell all
of the space.

------
marcelftw
I might as well add my product to the discussion :
[http://www.theonemillioneuromap.com/](http://www.theonemillioneuromap.com/)

Hurry up, there's only 999996 pins left ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

