It is difficult to spend time with Alex Tew without walking away feeling thoroughly miserable. It isn’t that his company isn’t pleasant; it is. It isn’t that he’s not extremely bright and unnervingly modest; he is both. More than anything, it is because during the time that you spend speaking to him — let’s say two hours’ time, as I did — he grows richer by almost £1,000.
And if you think that makes you feel bad, imagine the effect on students at Nottingham University when they learn that during freshers’ week at the beginning of this month, while they were blowing what little cash they had, Alex made more than £100,000.
This is because Alex is a 21-year-old phenomenon. He is growing richer and richer by having a simple idea that exploits the omnipresence of the internet and its users’ absolute respect for, and addiction to, anything unique. In short, he set up a website that offered almost nothing for $1 million. And the buyers are flooding in.
The student’s rags-to-riches story begins on a balmy night in August at Alex’s parents’ home near Cirencester in Wiltshire. It was late and he was contemplating the consequences of finally agreeing to go to university after three years of hopping from lousy job to crazy idea and back again. Alex had been accepted on a business management course at Nottingham (he has nine GCSEs and three A-levels at good grades) but fees and accommodation for the first year alone came to £7,000.
“To put it bluntly, I was broke and dreading the prospect of running up huge debts as a student,” he says. We are in the students’ union bar at the university and Alex is drinking a Coke. He is a fresh-faced, spiky-haired live wire — nothing like the geek I had expected, the kid whose simple idea has set the internet community alight.
“I’ve always been an ideas sort of person and I like to brainstorm at night before I go to sleep — it’s my most productive time. So I wrote down ‘How can I become a millionaire before I go to university?’ It was a rather ambitious question, but I went with it.
“Then I wrote down the attributes that this idea would need: it had to be simple to understand and to set up; it had to attract a lot of media interest; and it needed a good name. After I wrote down those three things, the idea just popped into my head. I’d like to say it was more dramatic than that, but it wasn’t.”
His thought processes went something like this: what if he set up a website called the Million Dollar Homepage which contained exactly one million pixels (the tiny dots that make up an image on a screen)? What if he then used that page as, in effect, an advertising noticeboard where advertisers — mainly from the US — could buy space at $1 (60p) per pixel?
What if, when you clicked on the group of pixels bought by an advertiser, you were directed to that advertiser’s homepage? And what if you told potential buyers that this is the first page of its kind, that it’s going to become incredibly famous — and that a young British student will be able to go to university as a result of your generosity? “I went to sleep and when I woke up I still thought it was a good idea,” Alex recalls. “So over the next few days I set up the website and off it went.”
The Million Dollar Homepage captured the imagination of advertisers and has now spawned dozens of copycat sites that will undoubtedly do nowhere near as well as Alex’s. The reason for that is simple: the selling point of his page is that it was the first. In the first four weeks alone, Alex sold more than 300,000 pixels at $1 each.
He sold his first blocks of 100 pixels (the minimum number the eye can read) to his three brothers and some friends. Once sales had topped $1,000, he used the money to pay for a press release that was picked up by the BBC. This, is turn, “went viral” across the internet as person after person e-mailed it to friends around the world.
“It is brilliant in its simplicity,” says Professor Martin Binks, director of the Nottingham University Institute for Entrepreneurial Innovation. “I think advertisers have been attracted to it by its novelty and by the curiosity factor. Those that are buying space have realised that the site has become a phenomenon and people are flocking to have a look at it; that makes the advertising good value for money.”
I asked one of Alex’s advertisers why they bought space on the site. Was it charity, or is his idea really that good? Chris Magras, chief executive of engineseeker.com, an Arizona-based company that helps clients’ websites to appear at the top of worldwide search engines, bought 6,400 pixels as soon as he heard about the Million Dollar Homepage.
“It was ingenious,” says Magras. “It is easy to make money on the internet, but it is very difficult to have a unique idea, and this was. I immediately knew that this website was going to attract huge numbers of visitors so I bought pixels there and then. The results for us were amazing. We used to get 40,000 visitors a day to our site — that’s now up to 60,000.”
Back in Alex’s student digs — he is staying in halls of residence — raggedy T-shirts are drying on a clothes horse, course work is scattered around and the sound of the leaking toilet next door is keeping him awake. He has been at university just two weeks and, so far, no one knows he is the Million Dollar Boy.
I ask him to show me his bank balance to ensure that this isn’t an elaborate hoax. There is £50,600 in there and rising. We look at his PayPal and 2Checkout accounts — the clearing houses that receive payments — and there is more than $100,000 waiting to be passed to him. I see other orders that will take the number of pixels sold to more than 300,000.
“It’s criminal, isn’t it?” he says. “It’s like Monopoly money. I’ve always had a knack for making money and I always knew I wanted to live on my wits. When I was 8, I used to draw cartoons, make comics, photocopy them and sell them at school for 30p. I’ve got lots more ideas that this money will help me make reality. I see it as fun.”
So, what will he do with all that money? “Well, so far, I’ve bought lots of socks,” he says. “My socks were a mess.” His favourites have a Space Invaders logo on them. “They’re made of pixels, see? I will confess that I have been to look at a Mini in a car showroom. I’d love a car, but I don’t want anything stupid like a BMW.”
The other students really haven’t latched on to his identity yet, and he’s a little worried about how they will react when they do. “I’ve been thinking about that and I suppose I’ll have to be on my guard a bit, wondering whether they just want to get to know me or the money,” he says. “I’ll have to rely on being a good judge of character until the novelty wears off.”
Square deal: a business perspective
Melinda Herring, director of Lollipop Animation, online animation art gallery. Bought 600 pixels.
From the first day it brought us an average 300-400 hits. This Wednesday we had 2,000 hits from the advert. We are a new company, so word-of-mouth interest is vital. We have had about £500-600 worth of extra sales as a result of the advert.
Oliver Hudson, chief executive, Stamps Family Solicitors. Bought 400 pixels
I read about the site in a newspaper. My gut feeling was that it wasn’t going to bring in any business, but I wanted to give it a go. I’m not entirely sure what the impact on traffic or business has been. On balance it was probably a waste of money.
Peter Blackbyrne, director, Imagination Gym, Child Development products. Bought 1600 pixels
A couple of our shareholders showed me the website. It was a good way to build up our brand name. We get about 300 visitors a day from the advert. One of the reasons we did it is because we thought it would generate press attention. It’s worth $1,600 for the PR.
Paul Story, author of Tom Corven, the first novel to be written solely for publication as a podcast
I heard about his project through The Register, a UK internet news site. I estimate that approximately 400,000 people have seen it and 25,000 have clicked through to dreamwords.com, the home of Tom Corven. I could never afford such exposure.
Michelle McDonald, marketing manager, Key Publishing, publisher of specialist consumer magazines. Bought 800 pixels
I heard about the site on Sky News. When I looked at the site, I was hooked for a good 20 minutes clicking away at the pixels to find out what they were linked to. Just under 800 people have clicked on the banner in less than a week. Of these, 15 people have purchased something.
It was such a clever idea. I wish I’d thought of it
Ray Li, executive director of China Quest, a youth study and travel programme based in New Jersey. He bought 1100 pixels for $1,100.
I was checking the traffic statistics for my own website when I saw the Million Dollar Homepage on the list of websites with the biggest growth. It was so creative and so new. I didn’t care so much about the traffic, I just thought it was such a clever idea. I wish I’d thought of it, and I wanted to support Alex. It was also a great opportunity to showcase our product to the European market. We have had 10,000 extra hits from the advert. I don’t think it’s a long-term investment, though. At the moment it is a novelty, but I expect the traffic will level off. There are so many websites that have copied Alex now.
I always check up on the website to see how many pixels Alex has sold. I’m more curious about how his website is doing than how my advert is doing.
Alex did it. Could you? How to start an internet company and turn those pixels into pounds
There is no magic formula. Successful companies use every combination.
www.timesonline.co.uk/enterprise
www.bizhelp24.com
www.startups.co.uk
www.businesslink.gov.uk
www.scottish-enterprise.com
