Sunday, January 08, 2006

MillionDollarHomepage.com

It is a simple idea, the MillionDollarHomepage. It is no pleasure to the eye, but who cares. You sell a pixel for 1 US dollar and with 1 million pixels you get 1 million US dollars. Everyone could have invented it, but did not. Except for the UK student Alex Tew, who thought it up and through and executed the idea. Now he is selling the last 1000 pixels on e-Bay. While I am writing this there is a bid of 152,300.00 US dollars with 3 days and 22 hours to go in the auction.

The idea is a good one. So people will get dollar signs in their eyes and start copying the idea. And in the Netherlands the concept was copied shamelessly (did Alex Tew protect his concept?). Since last week a Dutch artist offers pixels: 100 pixels for 10 US dollars (8,44 euro). It is clear that he is not as experienced in the payment systems; yet he is online and in business. And he is not stopping at the Dutch borders, but he is also moving into Belgium. So far he got some publicity, but there is no change in his almost empty Dutch homepage.

Of course this Dutch MillionDollarHomepage is pure plagiarism. The man in question could not even think about a variation on the same theme. There are many opportunities; you can have a MillionDollarHomepage for travel or personal finance. And why not have one for bloggers on a particular subject with pixels growing as their readers’ crowd is increasing.

Well 3 days to go and we will know what the last 1.000 pixels will be valued at. For the rest the page will not change for five years. By that time most of the links will have been lost due to URL changes or companies going bust.

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