More Press Coverage
Our fund raising idea was included in an article in the Wall Street Journal today.
That's like being famous, right?
"At www.boxofstars.com two filmmakers are selling digital "stars" -- orbs of light of various hues and size that bounce about the home page and link to other sites -- to raise $50,000 and finance their picture."
Full Article
posted by The Hanged Man @ 5:58 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
We're also mentioned here.
Pretty cool, too ...
The link us from other online sections as well.
Our traffic is going through the roof!
I'm going to start saying "As featured in the Wall Street Journal" every time I say boxofstars.com now.
Pixel-Ad Entrepreneur
Closes With an Auction
By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
From The Wall Street Journal Online
In late November, this column talked about Alex Tew, a 21-year-old British man who, in a quest to fund his university studies, had arrived at the seemingly outlandish idea of creating a Web site and selling advertising in the form of "pixels" -- the simplest graphical denominator of a computer screen -- for a buck each. His goal: one million dollars.
What made the story noteworthy then was that Mr. Tew had already passed the halfway mark despite having no target audience or even the slightest bit of brand recognition. As of tomorrow, Mr. Tew could not only reach his million-dollar goal, he could surpass it by auctioning off the last 1,000 pixels for www.milliondollarhomepage.com on eBay. Further, Mr. Tew's business model has inspired hundreds, perhaps thousands, of copycat sites angling to find a new twist on pixel sales for whatever their needs may be.
As an entrepreneurial venture, Mr. Tew's stands out given his young age, global influence and quick return on an estimated $40,000 investment to host and publicize the site. On Aug. 26, Mr. Tew launched his home page and divided the screen into 10,000 small squares of 100 pixels each. He sold pixels for $1 each, with a minimum order of 100 pixels and promised to keep the page alive for at least five years. In each space, buyers could put a graphical ad of their choosing, linking it to their own site. Today the home page resembles a cluttered collage of ads in various shapes and colors.
Internet Celebrity
Meantime, Mr. Tew himself has taken on celebrity status in the Internet community. World-wide solicitations have swamped his email in-box; he says there are currently 10,000-plus unanswered messages soliciting him for everything from money and business advice to job positions. Getty Images, which provides film and photo images to media outlets and others, just conducted a portrait session with Mr. Tew and his parents in Cricklade, England.
In fact, all the attention has persuaded Mr. Tew to postpone his university studies -- an ironic turn of events given that school was the original impetus for his project.
"I never expected the site to reach the level of success it has done," he writes in an email. "But I can't see how I can realistically continue my studies in the immediate future -- due to the sheer scale of interest in my site, and all the new opportunities that have presented themselves as a result. There just isn't time now." He says he will return to school in September.
By the end of 2005, Mr. Tew had sold 999,000 pixels and demand outstripped supply for the last thousand. On Dec. 30, the page had one million unique visitors and Mr. Tew's server almost died, he says, forcing him to temporarily suspend order taking. Giddy prospective buyers pushed him to open a second page, but Mr. Tew had pledged to close the page when his goal of one million dollars was reached in order to protect its originality.
Final Auction
So over the New Year, Mr. Tew decided to do what any calculating businessman might: He put the last 1,000 pixels up for sale on eBay. The auction ends tomorrow at 1:42 p.m. EST; as of 6 p.m. last night, the highest offer from a pool of bidders handpicked by Mr. Tew was $160,109.09. He expects to net about $650,000 to $700,000 after costs, taxes and a donation he plans to give to The Prince's Trust, a U.K. charity for youth that once helped him.
Mr. Tew's efforts benefited from newness, shrewd marketing and the Internet's lightning-speed word of mouth. After first persuading his friends and family to buy pixels to make the page seem legitimate, he then began touting his site, and himself, to bloggers, who directed traffic Mr. Tew's way. The media in Britain picked up on his venture, fueling more visitors.
In mid-September, Mr. Tew's Web site landed on the "Movers & Shakers" feature of Alexa.com, which ranks the world's Web sites by the number of people who visit them. Marketing executives often troll Alexa.com, which is owned by Amazon.com, to check out what's hot and what's not, and at one point Mr. Tew's site reached Alexa's No. 2 spot. That brought in a new wave of advertisers. In October, a U.S. publicist named Imal Wagner contacted him about penning his life story; he declined but hired her to help him with a U.S. media tour.
Pixel Mania
The attention inspired rival sites. One attractive 22-year-old Siberian emergency worker has posted her own black-and-white photo on a home page; as people buy pixels on www.presentmecolor.com the image metamorphoses to color. At www.boxofstars.com two filmmakers are selling digital "stars" -- orbs of light of various hues and size that bounce about the home page and link to other sites -- to raise $50,000 and finance their picture. In a marriage of online and outdoor advertising, www.stickermyhummer.com encourages buyers to purchase ads on an online picture of the body of a Hummer H2; when that's filled the site's owner, a California State University student promises he'll buy a real one and wrap it in a graphical composite of the ads. There are charity sites, sites devoted to erotica, and plain-vanilla financial Web sites all using pixels to raise funds. An Indiana University student has even launched a parody site called www.trumpingalex.com, complete with a fake image of Mr. Tew sporting Donald Trump-esque hair.
While none of these seem to have replicated Mr. Tew's success, and it's unclear if they ever will, the sheer volume of attempts and creative juice behind them paints an interesting picture of collective online entrepreneurship around the globe. And at the very least, it suggests there will be an eventual shakeout of what works, and what doesn't. For instance, one site, www.worldofpersia.com, targets a single ethnic group and purports to have sold 1,900 pixels in two days. Two Carnegie Mellon students started www.nickelsforkatrina.org to raise money for hurricane victims.
Meantime, people are tweaking their pages' graphical elements to stand out: A Frenchman launched www.monpremiermillion.com where people place ads on a map of his homeland and www.yournameonthemoon.com solicits people to post missives on a lunar image.
Currently, Mr. Tew is holed up at home in Cricklade with his mom and dad, monitoring his auction on a 17-inch Hewlett-Packard laptop from his parents' living room and sleeping from 5 a.m. till 9 a.m. to keep up with U.S. time zones. His folks screen his calls -- their son's numbers got posted on the Internet -- and siblings helped sort through the last round of orders. Mr. Tew says he paid them.
Says his 58-year-old dad, Malcolm Tew: "Alexander has always had lots and lots of ideas, some good and some not so good. This is certainly the most, ah, fruitful."
Coming up tomorrow on StartupJournal.com, the results of the www.milliondollarhomepage.com pixel auction.
Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.
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