The Million Dollar Homepage: $1 Pixel Advertising Idea (Then and Now)

Remember the Million Dollar Homepage? In August 2005, a British student named Alex Tew had a simple idea to pay for university: sell one million pixels on a single web page at $1 each. Advertisers bought blocks of 10 x 10 pixels, uploaded a tiny logo and a link, and the page became one of the most famous viral websites of its time. We wrote about it in September 2005 with tips for buying pixels. Here is the full story and what the page looks like today.

Quick answer: The Million Dollar Homepage was a 1000 x 1000 pixel web page where Alex Tew sold advertising space at $1 per pixel, in 100-pixel blocks. It sold out in January 2006, earning just over $1 million, with the final 1,000 pixels auctioned on eBay. The page is still online at milliondollarhomepage.com, but many of its links now lead to dead sites.

How the Million Dollar Homepage worked

• The page was divided into 10,000 blocks of 10 x 10 pixels.
• The minimum purchase was one block for $100, because a single pixel was too small to see.
• Buyers uploaded an image and a link, and could add a hover text. Once submitted, ads could not be changed.
• Tew promised to keep the page online for at least five years, with no recurring fees.

See the page itself at milliondollarhomepage.com.

Our 2005 tips for buying pixels

When the page was still filling up, we suggested ways to get more clicks for your money, and they show how people thought about online ads at the time:

• Buy early, before the best spots were taken.
• Buy big, because larger ads stood out in the crowded grid.
• Pick a good location, such as the top rows and corners visible without scrolling.
• Make a catchy image, since even 500 pixels would not get clicked if the logo was dull.

These ideas still apply to any ad placement. See how to increase AdSense CTR with good placement.

How it sold a million dollars of pixels

Tew bought the first ads from friends and family, then a press release brought coverage from the BBC and newspapers worldwide. Bloggers like us linked to it, traffic exploded, and that traffic made the ads more valuable. Within weeks the page was among the most visited sites on the web. By January 2006 the last 1,000 pixels went on eBay, and the total takings passed $1,000,000. The page was even targeted by a DDoS extortion attack during its peak.

What happened to Alex Tew?

Tew tried several follow-up projects, including a pixel lottery, before co-founding the meditation app Calm, which became one of the most successful wellness apps in the world.

The Million Dollar Homepage today

The page is still online, frozen as it was in 2006. It has become an accidental study of “link rot”: researchers and journalists who check it every few years find a large share of the links now point to closed or changed websites. It is a reminder that even famous parts of the web disappear quickly unless someone preserves them. Projects like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine help keep that history alive.

Copycats and lessons

Hundreds of copycat pixel pages appeared, but almost none succeeded, because the novelty and media story could only happen once. The lasting lessons are about marketing: a simple, memorable idea, a clear goal and a story journalists want to tell can beat a big advertising budget. Similar viral-launch tricks later helped people get Slashdotted.

FAQ

Who created the Million Dollar Homepage?

Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from Wiltshire in England, launched it in August 2005.

How much money did the Million Dollar Homepage make?

It made just over $1 million, thanks to the final pixels selling at auction for more than their face value.

Is the Million Dollar Homepage still online?

Yes, but it has not changed since 2006, and many of the links are broken.