I wrote a story last year about Andy Law and Jake Beetge, expats in London, who latched onto the idea of selling online advertising, pixel by pixel.
The idea was borrowed from a Web site called milliondollarhomepage.com, the brainchild of 21-year-old Brit Alex Tew, which sold out in six months.
The logic is such: the site`s home page is divided into 10 000 100-pixel blocks, each measuring 10x10 pixels. Buyers may purchase no less than 100-pixel blocks, because anything smaller would be like trying to find a spot on a leopard.
But I digress... The "R1-a-pixel" idea has spawned a series of copycat Web sites, like millionrandidea.co.za, which now wears a "this domain has been suspended" sign. I wonder what happened there.
And what does that mean for advertisers who paid for a five-year online listing? Hmm... I must call London.
Amapixels.co.za, launched last month, is the latest site I know of on the checkerboard catwalk. Its grid background already shows off early birds like Biz-Community, Bid or Buy and Digital Planet.
It`s an expat thing
I`m beginning to suspect that the grass is not greener on the other side since these sites are being perpetrated (and I say so because it should be illegal to make that kind of money doing nothing) by young upstarts who fled their home shores.
Buyers may purchase no less than 100-pixel blocks, because anything smaller would be like trying to find a spot on a leopard.
Bhavna Singh, journalist, ITWeb
Tew started the trend. He was a British student who sold space for American dollars. Law and Beetge braved the gloomy European climate to make rands from the UK. The latest additions, by way of Amapixels, are South Africans David and Ray Warren, who have just returned from the UK.
Amapixels does have a great hook though: instead of raising the million to pay their way through varsity, 10% of their earnings will be donated to the Cancer Association of SA. They`re currently sitting at about 990 000 pixels and rands, and have until 2010 to get there (that`s the cut off date).
It`s a phenomenon
I Googled the concept and came up with 11 500 000 entries. Ridiculous! There`s the million-penny homepage, the million-pixel homepage, million UK pixels (now countries are claiming them?), the one-billion-dollar homepage (where you can get 3D pixel cubes), the million-buck homepage; the copycat list is almost endless.
Chances are one in a million that anyone else will have the same novel success Tew did. It`s a "been there, done that"!
* Bhavna Singh would like to make a million bucks from watching and waiting for a screen to fill up.
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