Summer of 2005 was nearing its end in England and a young man by the name of Alex Tew was about to enter college. He thought that it was insane that he’d go to university for 4 or 5 years and then come out owing tens of thousands of dollars (or pounds as it were). So, he had this silly little idea … put up a website with one million pixels of advertising space for $1 a pixel, keep all of the ads up forever (or at least five years), and use that money to pay for his schooling. If he sold all of the pixel advertising spots over the course of the next few years – then he would raise a million dollars.
So, he registered milliondollarhomepage.com, got a friend or two to buy a couple hundred dollar spots, and alerted the press. Somehow – the idea took off like wildfire. Media outlet after media outlet began picking up the story — next thing you know, he’s got thousands of visitors to his site every day … and a few websites thought “what the heck” and started buying advertising space … then more visitors, more sales … and the thing just exploded. He raked in over $400,000 in his first 7 weeks of starting the...