The Million Dollar Homepage project has just turned 10 years old!
It was August 24, 2005, when Alex Tew, a student from the UK, decided to register the domain MillionDollarHomepage.com; two days later, the pixel project was launched.
Tew, who nowadays manages Calm.com, a project that aspires to bring calmness and meditation through the display of imagery and sound, made more than $1 million dollars by selling advertising space on a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid. It took a couple of weeks for the project to go viral, and the spots sold out quickly after that – a total of 138 days!
Many of the advertisers on the Million Dollar Homepage are now defunct or point to parked domains, but the majority still exist.
The brilliance of the project let to many copycats over the years, but none came even close to Alex Tew’s success.
Happy 10th anniversary, Million Dollar Homepage!
Now THAT’S utilizing screen real estate. It resembles “Where’s Waldo”, but you can see NamePros in the top left, under the “ic” in “RentClicks.”
Congratulations to Alex and all his success over the years!