China and the free million page pixel

It all started with Alex Tew, a 21 year old British student who needed some money for College, and his idea of creating The Million Dollar Homepage on the 26^th of August. He established a website with a huge grid on it and started selling squares, each of a 10 pixel x 10 pixel size, for $1 per pixel. Computer science explains a pixel as the smallest discrete component of an image or picture on a CRT screen, which means that it’s basically a coloured dot.

The original idea behind it was to sell 1 Mio. of these tiny pixels and make $1 Mio. It turned out as a fabulous idea, as companies with varying business operating areas and different target groups started to buy the pixels in order to promote their company and have a direct link leading to their homepage. Alex Tew has been unexpectedly successful with his idea and has so far managed to sell $453,600 worth of pixels on his site.

Our capitalist society wouldn’t be where it is nowadays without constantly copying somebody else’s successful and profitable ideas and the fact that the Internet is now being congested with pixel websites is not very surprising. And as China’s companies are always on the lookout for boosting their yearly turnover, the Chinese also got in on the new business of the various so-called free million page pixel websites.

Since the stunning success of Alex Tew more and more companies from China and of course also countries from all over the world are either creating these free million page pixel websites themselves, have their advertisement put on somebody else’s website or sell a software which explains how to create ones own million dollar script pixel website.

The outcome of this kind of Pixel Advertisement is that there are up to 8 pixel sites being posted onto the Internet every day, there are in total 385 pixel sites offering pixels in different currencies, from $1 to $0 per pixel, in Euros, Yen, Rubels and Zloty. While the original site The Million Dollar Home Page is advertising companies from varying sectors, now there are pixel websites advertising companies from one particular sector, such as tourism, electronic toys, household supplies or dating services.

The Internet’s new marketing platform offers countries like China the possibility to not only promote the country and its numerous companies, but also move the culture and commerce across borders by using the free million page pixels websites. China’s companies are either creating their own type of a free million page pixel website with advertisements of either international companies or Chinese companies, or Chinese companies market themselves on the pixel website of an international company, in order to attract customers from outside of China.