The deal was preceded by extensive PR preparation. In his online diary, Tew said that in two days in London he managed to give countless telephone interviews, appeared on a popular radio station as a "special guest", was invited to the popular TV programme Richard & Judy on Channel 4, gave a couple of interviews to German television, and an article about The Million Dollar Page was published by America's most popular business newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.
Alex was eagerly waiting for the auction to end, expecting a flurry of bids in the final minutes. However, he is in no hurry to announce the winner. This will not be done until the money reaches his account.
The site Milliondollarhomepage.com was created on August 26, 2005, and thanks to its originality quickly became extremely popular. The project is simple: the main page features a grid of 10 thousand squares. Each of them is 100 pixels in size. Thus, the page has 1 million pixels, and each 10x10 square sells for $100. The first buyer, who bought 4 squares for $400, appeared after three days, but real fame and money came to Tew after the media, including major British newspapers, talked about his project.
Tew says his strategy was to come up with an idea that was simple to understand and easy to implement, give it a catchy name, and promote it through the Internet. He had some work experience online – for several years he had worked part-time as a web designer.
In the end, he decided to make money from online advertising, but to sell advertising not in the form of banners, text blocks or video clips.
The effect exceeded all expectations. When starting the project, Alex hoped to earn some cash to help his parents pay for his education ($37 thousand for 3 years), and also noted that he would like to buy new socks. Alex sent the link to the site to all his friends, they passed it on to their acquaintances, and so on. First, he asked his relatives and friends to buy pixels and place ads on the site so that it would look respectable. Then relatives and friends began to tell their acquaintances about the site and its unusual idea, and the flow of visitors to the site continued to grow.
The news was picked up by the British media, and as a result, site traffic grew even more. Two weeks after the launch of the site, Tew had sold advertising worth $40 thousand, and 200 thousand visitors came to the site in three days. Then the news reached the American media, and a "second wave" began.
As a result, the page became a collage of advertising messages of various shapes and sizes. Tew does not charge his clients any extra fees for the number of visits and guarantees that his site will exist for at least 5 years – until 2010.
Domestic followers of Alex Tew cannot yet boast of the same success. As Newsru.com notes, in just over three months, only 59.9 thousand pixels have been sold in the Russian-speaking Internet. Apparently, our compatriots working online find it easier to organize web site development in Odessa than to pay money for a beautiful idea that promises direct enrichment to only one side. And the idea itself has not yet taken root on local soil – despite Russian prices for a British marketing find: the difference of the Russian analogue is only that here one pixel costs only 1 ruble.