Friday, March 10, 2006

The Million dollar Web page

Many of you might have heard about this, but for those who haven't,

First the story:

Alex Tew, a 21 year old student wanted to study business management at the University of England, but like many graduate students , he wasn't sure of how he would get the money for it. Pondering over different ideas, he thought of making a homepage and selling ads on it for 1 $ / pixel, thinking that if there would be a million pixels up for sale, at least 15k to 20k pixels would be sold off, thus giving him enough money to get through his college.( http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/faq.php#4)

This said and done, he started selling pixels and the site become hugely popular, and ultimately he made much more than a million dollars on it.

This one story is truly great. Simply because unlike startups (eg Google), where the underlying principle involved a great deal of technology and/or business models and business sense, in addition to the idea, this did not require anything at all. Plus, no venture capitalist, no proposals , and to top it all, no risk of failure. What would he have lost in case this idea did not work. Some dollars, and hardly any man hours. But then, it worked, and credit to Alex for proving to the world that 'where there is a will, there is a way '

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