The
Pixel Story (from BBC News - Link)
It took a 21-year-old a few minutes to come up with an idea
which has made him more than one million dollars in four months.
So what's his secret?
It started with a blank notepad, an overdraft and a shortage
of socks.
Now it's a million-dollar business.
Last August, as a three-year degree loomed, Alex Tew lay
on his bed in his family home in Cricklade, Wiltshire. It
was time for his nightly brainstorming session.
This time, the problem was his finances. He already had an
overdraft, which was sure to multiply at university, and he
felt his poverty was reflected by his lack of decent, or matching,
socks.
As I made money, more people talked about it and the more
people talked about it, the more money I made
The first thing he wrote in his pad was "How can I become
a millionaire?" Twenty minutes later, the Million Dollar
Homepage idea was born.
It was selling pixels, the dots which make up a computer
screen, as advertising space, costing a dollar per dot. The
minimum purchase was $100 for a 10x10 pixel square to hold
the buyer's logo or design. Clicking on that space takes readers
to the buyer's website.
With $999,000 banked so far, Alex recalls his thought process
at the time. He says: "I wrote the title to spark the
creativity and then wrote down the attributes the idea needed.
It had to be simple to set up and understand.
"It had to have a name to capture the imagination and
be something that could be set up quickly with no physical
delivery required.
"I wrote down some keywords and then the idea came out
20 minutes later - selling pixels. So I snapped up the domain
name that very night."
Snowballing
Alex spent £50 on buying the domain name (milliondollarhomepage.com)
and a basic web-hosting package. He designed the site himself
but it began as a blank page. His friends and family paid
the first $1,000 dollars, which he spent on a press release.
That small publicity gave his site more traffic, which in
turn persuaded more advertisers to have faith.
An iconic image of internet art?
"It snowballed," he says. "As I made money,
more people talked about it and the more people talked about
it, the more money I made."
Four months and 2,000 customers later, including The Times
and Orange, and the million dollars is almost surpassed. Two
million different people have accessed the site, which has
a wry blog and FAQs, in the last seven days.
"I've been blown away. These have been the most exciting
and hectic months of my life. Things are quite surreal at
the moment and because it's been so busy it hasn't really
sunk in.
"It seems like Monopoly money. Previously I'd associated
money with working at Tesco getting paid £5 an hour."
His first business venture was when, aged eight, he drew
comics and sold them at school. He had no intention of going
to university because he wanted to try out some of his ideas.
eBay twist
But after three years of odd jobs such as stacking shelves
in Tesco, and setting up some websites, like humanbeatbox.com,
which led to a cameo part in EastEnders, he decided on a degree.
Yet before he'd even started his business management course
at Nottingham University, he was on his way to earning a million
dollars.
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Web
Pixel Mania was started 
with
a conversation about the Million Dollar Home Page (
