I hope this isn't a dupe

Cash pours in for student with $1 million Web idea

If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.

Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.

Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.

He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking out how he would pay for university.

The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A 10 by 10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.

He sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $1,000, he issued a press release.

That was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.

So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels. Tew's home page now looks like an online Times Square, festooned with a multi-colored confetti of ads.

"All the money's kind of sitting in a bank account," Tew told Reuters from his home in Wiltshire, southwest England. "I've treated myself to a car. I've only just passed my driving test so I've bought myself a little black mini."

The site features testimonials from advertisers, some of whom bought spots as a lark, only to discover that they were receiving actual valuable Web hits for a fraction of the cost of traditional Internet advertising.

Meanwhile Tew has had to juggle running the site with his first term at university, where he is studying business.

"It's been quite a difficulty trying to balance going to lectures and doing the site," he said.

But he may not have to study for long. Job offers have been coming in from Internet companies impressed by a young man who managed to figure out an original way to make money online.

"I didn't expect it to happen like that," Tew said. "To have the job offers and approaches from investors -- the whole thing is kind of surreal. I'm still in a state of disbelief."

Wow.

He's ghey and I hate him!

cause he bought a mini

We should chip in and put an AR15.com logo on there! You have to give the kid credit though, he's nearly $900K richer and it the #1 most popular newstory today on Yahoo.

I love the free enterprise spirit, wish I had thought of it.

"you know some people don't have to put up with this, like that guy who made the pet rock...you know he made a million dollars"

holy jeebus, that is the coolest thing in the world,

man what a genius.

Quoted: "you know some people don't have to put up with this, like that guy who made the pet rock...you know he made a million dollars"

the guy made a million dollars!!!

How about a "jump, to conculsions mat"?

the only thng more ridiculus than paying money for a tiny billboard surrunded by thousands of other tiny little billboards is the fact that people actually surf on in there and click on them.

Quoted: the only thng more ridiculus than paying money for a tiny billboard surrunded by thousands of other tiny little billboards is the fact that people actually surf on in there and click on them.

That's probably what the creator of the site thinks too, but he's laughing all the way to the bank.

on the website, it only shows they have sold 100 of the "pixels"

Quoted: on the website, it only shows they have sold 100 of the "pixels"

HUH? They must of sold a boat load between the time you were there and when I got there... It now shows 911,300...

Quoted: Quoted: on the website, it only shows they have sold 100 of the "pixels" HUH? They must of sold a boat load between the time you were there and when I got there... It now shows 911,300...

i was going to post the same thing...   but it seems the page must of been in my cache....   i hit f5 and it showed the right  numbers


i hate him cause i didnt think of it...

a pixel is very very small

Damn I thought of that
Oh he beat me to it

Quoted: Damn I thought of that Oh he beat me to it

You too? Looks like he beat both of us...

Impossible.

We all know Generation Y are all a bunch of slackers and losers, and this guy is already a millionaire when he's 21.  

Good for him!

Quoted: We should chip in and put an AR15.com logo on there! You have to give the kid credit though, he's nearly $900K richer and it the #1 most popular newstory today on Yahoo.

Well... he IS from England, which means that after taxes, he will be able to keep $14.81 of that $900,000.  

"brilliant!"

nice - Does it say how long your pixel will last for $1?  I mean come on, you gotta have recurring revenue!

Quoted: Impossible. We all know Generation Y are all a bunch of slackers and losers, and this guy is already a millionaire when he's 21.

There is still hope...

He will probably sqaunder it all away by the time he is 25 and will be pennyless and homeless.

It just goes to show that there is an idiot born every minute and in this case quite a few idiots have been born.

BigDozer66

Quoted: Wow.

I will agree with you.

It looks like the spam, spyware and adware mecca of the internet!

BigDozer66