We All Need Heroes

MILLION DOLLAR HOMEPAGE

Chapter: Dumb But Brilliant

Take one college-bound student with an overdrawn bank account and one twenty-minute brainstorming session on how to raise money to pay for school, and what do you get? A million-dollar idea that’s had people around the world slapping their foreheads and muttering “Why didn’t I think of that?” ever since.
    We’re back in year 2005. With only one month to go before he was to begin university and no money in his bank account, Alex Tew was determined to find a way to avoid student debt. Armed with a notebook and pen, Tew stayed up late one night brainstorming ways to make some quick cash. To help jumpstart his creativity, he wrote down just one question on his notepad: How can I become a millionaire? Twenty minutes later, he had his answer: Sell one million pixels of advertising space on a website for $1 each.
    Tew already had some experience with website design, so with $100, he quickly bought a domain name and some basic web hosting services and had his website, MillionDollarHomepage.com, up and running in two days. The concept was simple. Businesses could buy 10x10 or larger blocks of advertising space for a $1 per pixel and place their logos and links on his site. Tew knew that no one would be interested in buying pixel space if he didn’t get the ball rolling, so he convinced some family and friends to chip in to buy the first 1,000 pixels. He also thought it would be a good story for the media to pick up, so Tew took the money he made from the first 1,000 pixels he sold and used it to write and send out press releases to the local media near his hometown of Cricklade, England.
    Four months and 2,000 customers later, including The Times and Orange, the million dollars was almost surpassed. Two million people had accessed the site. On the 1st of January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on January 11th with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final sum to $1,037,100 in gross income.

Possible Moral
The secrets of Alex Tew‘s success story comes down to two important factors: The power of word of mouth and the story of a student making a million, which enchanted the media. Others eager to learn from him should have faith in their creative mind, take calculated and affordable risks, and treat “failure” in a positive way, as a learning process.


Story from We All Need Heroes: Stories of the Brave and Foolish.
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