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The Future Of Pixel Advertising
by Andrew Nielsen
Inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage where Alex Tew made a million dollars in just five months, a lot of hopefuls – including Alex Tew himself - are copying and developing the idea of pixel advertising. But is it still possible to make money on this idea?
In August 2005 a young Englishman by the name of Alex Tew got a bright idea. He wanted to make money online to pay for his studies. The idea had to be simple, not take too much of his time and be able to generate a lot of money. Selling advertising space could generate money, but the traditional way of advertising with banners on a webpage simply wouldn't do. To make a lot of money, a lot of webpages, space and time would be needed. So Alex thought of selling really small ads – and a lot of them – on one webpage. Alex created an image made of 1,000 times 1,000 pixels – a total of 1,000,000 – and intended to sell each pixel for $1. This one image could fit to one webpage and would generate a millions dollars if all pixels were sold. And thus, the Million Dollar Homepage was born.
Alex – like any good salesman - started by pestering friends and family and urging them to buy some pixels from him. As he started getting orders, he made the very wise decision of alerting the media of his idea. The media liked the idea of the entrepreneurial student trying to make money on the internet for his studies, by coming up with an idea that simple. Alex played the media very well indeed and appeared in print, radio, TV and on the internet. As the story picked up two months into the project, Alex hired a media consultant to help him handle the frenzy. It took only 5 months until the 1,000,000 pixels were sold and the million dollars were reached.
Quickly a lot of copycats copied Alex' idea and many more have followed. It is estimated that there are now more than 5,000 sites selling pixels in a way similar to the Million Dollar Homepage or with slight variations. Only a very tiny fraction of these are have made any money. So why is that?
The original page owes its success primarily to the publicity it got in the media. As any new copycat website has no or very little news value, why would anyone pick up on the story? As there are now thousands of similar sites, how could any one site generate enough traffic for advertisers to be interested in buying advertising space?
There are slight variations over the basic business idea of pixel advertising. Some pixel websites now offer free pixels and premium pixels with better location than the free ones. Some websites offer pixels on a picture of the moon or a map of a certain country or region. Other websites offer intricate ways of trading pixels or pixels at $0.01 or less.
Alex Tew himself has developed a new site with a variation over the original theme. On the blog on the Million Dollar homepage the launch of his new online business idea has been promoted for quite some time. The new site Pixelotto - which was launched in December 2006 – allows advertisers to buy pixels for $2. For each pixel sold, $1 goes to a prize fund, $0.10 goes to a charity fund and the rest goes to Alex Tew and maintaining the site. What's new about the site is that the accumulated prize fund will go to one of the site's registered users. Anyone can register and to take part in the draw, a user needs to click on at least 10 different ads on the site in a given day. The idea of this obviously is that the advertisers are guaranteed traffic from the site (although low quality, not targeted traffic) and that users have an incentive to return to the site daily. The draw for the prize is held after all one million pixels are sold or after a year of the site being live, which ever comes first. The winner can also decide which charity is to receive the money generated for charity.
So how is Alex doing on with his new site? The answer has to be that he has done surprisingly well. As of March 2007, a total of about 150000 pixels have been sold. This means that $150000 has gone to the prize fund, $15000 to the charity fund and that the remaining $135000 dollars have covered setup and development costs and marketing, leaving Alex with a healthy profit. A check on Alexa however reveals that visitor numbers have plummeted since the site's launch and it appears that no pixels on the new site have been sold for the last few weeks. It seems fairly likely that no new revenue will be generated, due to the low amount of traffic on the site. A check on Alexa for the traffic of the advertisers reveals a very small, or no increase in traffic, for those sites.
What is missing on the new site is that it lacks the novelty of the original, that Alex is no longer a poor student with an ingenious way of funding his studies and of course that thousands of other sites do something similar already. There's no personal touch, no blog and thus no interesting story that the media would follow.
It is anyone's guess what the future of pixel advertising will be. The author of this article was certainly surprised at the how well Alex' new site did immediately after its launch. With thousands of sites out there doing something similar, it is however unlikely that significant revenue can be generated with pixel advertising.
Luckily, to make money online, there are plenty other more profitable roads to follow.
About the author:
Andrew Nielsen is the author of The Online Business Builder.
A free preview is available on http://www.i-want-to-be-rich.com/.
Andrew is an entrepreneur and internet veteran and is currenly helping individuals and small businesses make money online.
Article source: The Future Of Pixel Advertising
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