Student's bright idea makes him a million

gameboy

Wish I'd tried this one...

AN ENTERPRISING student who set up a simple advertising website to try to make $1 million over three years hit his target last night - less than five months after starting the project.

Last August, Alex Tew, 21, was looking for ways to avoid falling into debt and came up with the idea of creating a site with 10,000 mini advertising spaces which he would put up for sale at $100 (£57) each.


News of the website - milliondollarhomepage.com - soon spread and the concept caught the imagination of some of the world's biggest companies.

Last night, at 6:42pm, the final advertising spot, which was sold on the internet auction site Ebay , secured a winning bid of £21,592 from an American company - and the student had achieved his million-dollar dream.

His total earnings worked out at $1,037,000 - or £587,875.

Mr Tew, of Cricklade, Wiltshire, said: "I feel like a million dollars. I just cannot believe this has gone so massive. I'm trying desperately to keep my feet on the ground."

His target had been to sell the whole web page by the time he finished his degree course in three years.

Mr Tew said he came up with the idea for the site in the middle of the night as he thought of ways to avoid racking up the same university debts as one of his three brothers. He reckoned he needed £30,000 to fund his business management degree at Nottingham University.

He said: "I was up late with my notepad when it came to me. I decided it had to be the million dollar home page - million pound didn't quite have the same ring to it."

He sold his first $100 block to one of his brothers, then a few friends bought space and the ball really started rolling.

After a month, he had made £56,000 from the site, managed from the home of his parents, Malcolm, 58, a commercial pilot, and Christine, 54, a registrar.

The success of the site - made up of one page divided into 10,000 boxes, each 100 pixels in size - has been phenomenal.

More than 1.5 million people have visited the site since its launch.

The mobile phone company Orange, the Hollywood star Jack Black's rock band, Tenacious D, the Times, and Ebay were among those who bought space for mini adverts, which, when clicked on, take users to their websites.

Putting the phrase "million dollar home page" into the internet search engine Google returns a staggering 74,300,000 links to people talking about it, while the internet popularity monitor Alexa.com ranks the site the 127th most successful in the world.

As he weighed up the success of his venture, Britain's newest dollar-millionaire said: "I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the money, yet. I bought a nice car, a new Mini, but I haven't splashed out too much.

"I'm thinking about investing it or maybe trying to come up with another good idea."

He has been inundated with job offers and did a short speaking tour of the United States, appearing on television chat shows and in major newspapers and magazines.

Mr Tew had intended to sell the last chunk of space as normal but changed his mind and decided to use Ebay . At one point, worldwide bidding for the last chunk hit $140,300 before it dropped back.

Source: Scotsman

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Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

rolfw

One of those "I wish I'd thought of it" ideas.

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gameboy

The thing is - I can't get his web site to load - it takes ages - hope the cheques have cleared - LOL

__________________

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.