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What can you do with a million pixels?
By Todd C. Frankel - ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH - 02/12/2006
The idea was kick-me simple. A get-rich-quick scheme that
worked. No lies. No deceit.
That was its appeal.
Alex Tew, a 21-year-old Brit, came up with it.
He was thinking of ways to raise money for college tuition.
So he decided to subplot a Web page into its smallest pieces
and sell them for $1 apiece. He offered a million pin-headed
parcels to advertisers, in blocks of at least 10-by-10 pixels.
He called his site milliondollarhomepage.com. He started
in August. Last month, the young man from Wiltshire, England,
reached his goal. He sold his last pixel, and he had his
$1 million.
The story quickly became lore.
Wayne White, a graphic designer in St. Louis, remembers
asking himself: "Why can't I think of something like
that?"
He wasn't the only one. Thousands - perhaps millions - of
others did, too. "Why can't I think of something like
that?"
And so they did.
It is the Internet's long tail. A stampede of copycat sites
have opened, each grasping for an ever-shrinking piece of
the prize - a pixel here, a pixel there. Even now, the dream
refuses to die out, even for some St. Louisans.
"It's gone absolutely berserk," says Larry Weeden,
a St. Louis Webmaster who has been following the growth
of what are now called pixel ads. "There is all kinds
of silly stuff. And most of them aren't making it."
White admits he got a late start. On Jan. 4, as
Tew's site neared $1 million, White finally registered the
name for his own site: stlpixelads.com. It opened
two weeks later with a million blank pixels and . . . he
has sold 5,000 so far.
He gave some ads away to clients. He has earned $450. A
million dollars seems a long way off.
"It's starting off very slow," White admits.
But he has his niche staked out. The focus is St. Louis-area
pixel ads.
He soon may have competition. On Feb. 1, someone bought
the domain name stlouispixelads.com.
Late last month, St. Louis club promoter Ken Cox jumped
in the game. He launched pixelvice.com. He aims to attract
a mostly male audience in the St. Louis area. A counter
on the site says that 59,000 of the 1 million pixels have
been taken. Many of the ads were given away.
"I'd rather not discuss how much money we're making,"
Cox said.
He knows time is running out.
"I think the future of this is short-lived,"
he said. But, "I'm going to give it a shot."
Tew's site soared because it was the first. The gimmick
was fresh. The hype was huge. Advertisers jumped at the
shot to join in. With the site pulling in thousands of visitors
each day, advertisers saw a chance to grab people's attention,
even if only on a screen packed with tiny messages and pictures.
The new sites tend to look like Tew's original, but with
far fewer ads and each owner adding a twist. There are sites
for Christians, baby photos and a paraplegic fisherman.
Roy Randolph, who uses a wheelchair, runs fishingpixels.com
from outside Detroit. He is looking to raise enough money
to buy a boat. He has his eye on a $40,000, 20-foot Champion.
He says he has raised nearly $10,000.
"The fact that I'm a paraplegic, that I have a cause,
I'm the hook for the site," Randolph said.
A Branson, Mo., Web designer was one of the earliest copycats
- and he readily admits to being one.
James Thomson went with millionpennyhomepage.com. His goal
was proportionally smaller: $10,000. But with a good head
start on the competition, he reached his milestone on Dec.
4, after just three months.
"It's crazy," Thomson said.
But it's not always easy. Thomson helped a friend with
a pixel ad site. The angle: They'd blow up a car if they
raised $10,000 in ads. The site has withered away.
Meanwhile, Thomson still gets requests from advertisers
looking to buy spots on his site. He even expanded beyond
the original 1 million pixels. He's doing better than he
ever imagined.
"I just wish I'd thought up the original idea,"
Thomson said. "But I can't complain."
[email protected] 314-340-8110
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