The Million Dollar Homepage: Alex Tew

The Million Dollar Homepage

MillionDollarHomepage.com Networth: $3 Million
Founder: Alex Tew
Age: 22

It took a 21-year-old a few minutes to come up with an idea which has made him more than one million dollars in four months. So what's his secret?

It started with a blank notepad, an overdraft and a shortage of socks.

Now it's a million-dollar business.

Last August, as a three-year degree loomed, Alex Tew lay on his bed in his family home in Cricklade, Wiltshire. It was time for his nightly brainstorming session.

This time, the problem was his finances. He already had an overdraft, which was sure to multiply at university, and he felt his poverty was reflected by his lack of decent, or matching, socks.

The first thing he wrote in his pad was "How can I become a millionaire?" Twenty minutes later, the Million Dollar Homepage idea was born.

It was selling pixels, the dots which make up a computer screen, as advertising space, costing a dollar per dot. The minimum purchase was $100 for a 10x10 pixel square to hold the buyer's logo or design. Clicking on that space takes readers to the buyer's website.

With $999,000 banked so far, Alex recalls his thought process at the time. He says: "I wrote the title to spark the creativity and then wrote down the attributes the idea needed. It had to be simple to set up and understand.

Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an Internet phenomenon. The Alexa ranking of web traffic peaked at around 127; as of 18 February 2009 (2009 -02-18), it is 42,735. On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross income.

Sources: BBC News, Wikipedia.org