Million Dollar Home Page

[longen]

The BBC have yet another article on the subject - but this one is quite good.
If he put the site up for auction sale - would he get another $million?

[news.bbc.co.uk ]

[speedpro50]

Not sure about that. His auction for the last 1,000 pixels is proving to be quite the winner of an idea too!

[jecasc]

I think he can make a lot more money of his idea. As long as he is bright enough to keep the "poor student" image despite one million on his account. Because its mainly this from "rags to riches" story that makes his success.

[Drew3D]

The Million Dollar Home Page is interesting for so many reasons... when I first thought about it, I wondered what the heck kind of ad can you fit in 10x10 pixels? Who would advertise there anyway? (other than the casino site we all know that advertises everywhere).

And, is there any possible way an ad there could have any kind of ROI?

The later advertisers seem like they're getting the worst deal, because who is going to go there after it's completely full? You have to think his traffic is going to take a nosedive after about another month or two.

[jchampliaud]

Has anyone got the page to load? I can't, seems to take forever.

[penfold25]

"Tew, who launched the site to pay his college expenses, has promised to keep the site up for five years. Although he attended university last fall, he recently said he would take the rest of the year off to "organize my life, consolidate my financial position, and explore some of the new opportunities that have presented themselves."

what a surprise, why pay for uni fees, when you can not pay them at all and keep all the money yourself.

[Sweezely]

Apparently he went to Nottingham University, so chances are if he ever goes back he'll be shot.

[tomda]

Has anyone got the page to load? I can't, seems to take forever.

The site is currently under attack by denial of service and the guy has been blackmailed two times asking for few thousands dollars. The site has been down for two days I think. He called the FBI (because it is hosted in USA)... It seems that emails are coming from Russia but again the information has to be verified!

Heard the interview this morning in BBC World Service. I guess it is just more publicity for him and its homepage. It is may be part of his marketing strategy :)

Then, following the interview, they asked to an Internet specialist about denial of services... He said - every webmaster knows it - that it is a very COMMON practice. Huge corporate or internet-base companies are often prepared to such attack and rarely pay the hackers (although few does it). But most of the middle and small Internet-base companies do pay (mostly 1000 to 5000 USD), which is a real problem.

Google for "million dollar denial" to read more about the attack...

[balam]

The Million Dollar Home Page comes under fire [itworldcanada.com]

Officials from InfoRelay met to figure out what they could do to stem the attacks within the constraints of Tew's service package, Weiss said. Tew wasn't on an enterprise-level deal that often includes advanced hardware, from vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc., used to prevent the effects of DDOS attacks, Weiss said.

[balam]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a million pixels must be worth a billion words...

So, to continue the story that won't die:

Million $ pixel site faces legal threat [theregister.co.uk]

The student entrepreneur behind the milliondollarhomepage.com is facing the threat of legal action from the firm that paid more than $38,000 for the last 1,000 pixels.

Milliondollarweightloss.com secured the last slot on Alex Tew's website after he auctioned it on eBay.

But the FT reports that lawyers representing the weight-loss site are preparing to sue Tew in a US court for "breach of contract", among other things.