I’ve considered ways to make the concept viable as a business and have come up with few ideas on that topic. The best I think I have mulled out is taking the concept and applying a Google spin to it. Create a categorization technique to label each submitted pixel/link, combine them into a single banner or thumbnail and contextually place them on publisher sites. Charge a nominal setup fee ($5) and then start the bidding wars for not only internal banner pixel placement, but for targeted sites and keywords. You could use the home page to display the pixels ala MDHP, and also allow bidding on the page.

I’m sort of disappointed in the lack of tech prowess the MDHP page shows, but nevertheless it was obviously not intended to be cutting edge in that sense so I considered how to technically make a pixel ad page work better and this naturally goes towards Web 2.0 tendencies. A Web 2.0 approach here would be to use AJAX/RSS techniques to load up the categorized or home page targeted ads via XmlHttpRequest, parsing each and positioning each dynamically. Then you can automate the process for each visit and check for updates to the ad list/images, applying them to the home page as necessary and dynamically. Then the page loads up without images and starts populating after the response with the ad list is received. The RSS feed itself could be used to syndicate the ad feed as well.

Sounds almost useful to me – and might actually be a viable business. Maybe it even exists already. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if someone out there has already considered these things and taken care of them. If not, cut me in on the deal, eh?

Traffic continues to trickle in through my little 100 pixel pi on the page. It must be the blue Viagra pill right next to my ad (and drunken old folks missing it when trying to click). I admonish that I’m rather disappointed in the final presentation my pixel ad offers – the shaded 400 pixel version came out looking much better, but being the cheap bastard that I am, it was enough to give away the $100 for what I got.

I recently modified my Million Dollar Link to forward to a new site I setup called pixelsmagnified.com. Yeah that’s right. I started “Yet Another Lame Million Dollar Hompage Copy-Cat”. As you can see it’s not working. Why? Probably because even if you could get a spot on the page FOREVER, there’s not much other attraction to see the page for the average joe. Did I really think it was going to succeed? No – I’m just greedy.

Contemplation has set in. What should I do to make that more effective? I’m still thinking about it, but I hope I can come up with something original – perhaps something even cool. Will it involve pixel advertisements? Nope – I think it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that this is a one hit wonder. Perhaps something of a spin-off might succeed, but this one is locked, loaded and spent.

If you would like to keep track of just how many clicks that little spot of pixels receives, watch the traffic counters I setup at statcounter.com. The stats started Dec 30 and go forward. Prior to that I had received approximately 280 visits from the ad.

In the meantime I promise to continue my coverage in all over mundane interests I happen across.

I’ve been watching his auction out of curiosity mostly. I originally thought he’d be good to generate another $50,000, maybe $100,000 for those final pixels (based on Alex’s indication that the winner would receive additional PR). I checked out his auction today and nearly fell out of my chair. The latest bid for his last 1,000 pixels was $6,001,100 from a newly registered user named dkeene7! A little bit further and “the Million Dollar Homepage” becomes a very big understatement.

Upon further examination, I have noted that the preposterously obscene bids have been removed and the top bid now apparently stands at $152,100 from a user named ast1155td. While this number is a bit more reasonable, it still beats my estimate of $100,000, and is 15 times the cost paid by those who got in earlier. I guess I am glad I bought my ad when I did!

Nevertheless time will tell just how far the bidding goes on this last batch of pixels. Just a bit under 6 days left to go and it’s obvious there’s still plenty of interest in this one. Got some money burning a hole in your bank account? Why not go blow it on a 1,000 pixel ad on the Million Dollar Homepage!

I’m left wondering if Alex will mention the astronomical bids the auction received today and why they were removed. Of course we can all speculate that the bids were bogus and made by someone just for the benefit of driving the price up. Or perhaps it was the same folks that helped this guy avoid paying 1,000 pounds for a PICTURE of a 42″ Plasma TV.

If you can’t see yourself paying for an ad on a million dollar homepage, maybe you can help this guy save his penis. Until next time…

On the same day I requested placement on PixelWall, PixOld, and Rent-A-Patch. I also recently requested placement on PixelLance, RentPixelAds and Freemillionpixels.com. Yeah that’s a few pixel sites. But I wanted a fair sampling to get an idea, and quite honestly drive as much traffic as possible. While we’re not seeing insane levels of traffic it is certainly not nothing. Here’s a little detail on each:

MDHP – Listed 12/20 – 34 referrals
PixelWall – Listed 12/19 – 1 referral
PixOld – Listed ~ 12/28 – 0 referrals
RentAPatch – 12/19 – 0 referrals
PixelLance – 12/21 – 17 referrals
RentPixelAds – 12/22 – 3 referrals
FMP – 12/23 – 0 referrals

I also received 17 referrals from PixelsUSA, which is apparently a voting site for the pixels list on the Million Dollar Homepage. So a little over 70 in bound views on a page that heretofore did not exist. While I could honestly say that statistically amounts to more than 7,000% increase in traffic to the page, considering what it was beforehand this is leaving out some important facts. Notice how many hits the page received from PixelLance – this site must also be generating a bit of traffic (though I should mention the ad there is 400 pixels).

Most of the visitors who come through appear to leave at the million dollar link without much ado. They probably find the design of the page appalling (or perhaps my directing them to links where they can sell stuff for commission). Very few of the visitors to this page seem to browse beyond, into my totally useless “so-called web space” or this not so totally useless blog (only a fraction of measure above “totally” useless). Maybe that’s why – can you really sense a dud link before clicking on it?

All of this nevertheless made me consider the quality or type of traffic that came and went, and the potential factors involved that creates it. Is it the pixel ad and the caption, just the solitary question mark? Maybe this is attracting those seeking the answer to the question hinted at by the solitary mark? I chose the mark because I don’t know what value a pixel ad really represents – maybe this doomed me to lots of useless traffic?

I’d be interested in other 100 pixel owner’s traffic statistics and quality information – does your pixel receive more or less traffic? Do they buy anything? Do they take interest in whatever “novelty” you have put up for the link? Let me know!

As for novelty – my first thought is a digital version of those word games you see in coffee shops and on refigerators. Not so great probably. Maybe something better…

Until then enjoy the vaccuum of suck and yet another misadventure.

–Ryan

I quite honestly bought my share of his pixels for a cool $100, but wasn’t without some thought on the issue. I mean, here’s a guy five years my junior who’s already made over $850,000 on a whim practically overnight. Why should I give him more? I guess it was the promise of a lasting piece of history that made me click the PayPal button. Here’s an incredibly novel concept from a bright young fellow, and he’s offering to make your placement a lasting piece of the Internet. It’s like graffiti preserved for the future generations to see.

So I bought in and submitted my 10×10 image of the Pi symbol with an ALT of “?”. I’m still really not sure what to do with this real estate. While I decide on that I have determined that whoring affiliate programs and other services I like is a great temporary purpose. Take a look at my milliondollarlink page here. For those that are interested I’ll post a journal or other info on the status the link generates.

To further the potential traffic to this page I have also uploaded the image to PixelWall, requested an image be placed on PixOld and uploaded a 20×20 gradient version to Rent-A-Patch. See if you can find them (my link at MillionDollarHomepage is pending at the time of this post). Bear in mind this obviates the fact that any stats I post are purely subjective and certainly NOT scientific in any way.

So far the counts are at zero. I’ll keep you posted!