Who is Alex Tew?
Alex Tew is a British entrepreneur. He founded The Million Dollar Homepage in 2005, at 21.
In only 5 months, he was able to earn his first million. He made the headline-hitting Flash game Sock and Awe in late 2008 and, in 2012, a meditation app called Calm.
Here’s a quick brief of Alex Tew.
“My name is Alex Tew, I’m 21 years old, and I live in a small town in Wiltshire, England. I’ll start at University in England at the end of September, where I will be reading Business Management. University is not cheap, and faced with the prospect of graduating after three years with a huge debt, I thought I’d try and make some money….. $1m should do the trick! “
About milliondollarhomepage.com and the mastermind behind it – Alex Tew:
Many new entrepreneurs need an overdraft when they start their businesses or digital marketing journey. Alex Tew was an exception. His ambition was to become a millionaire before he went to university so that he would not leave with huge debts.
To achieve this, he needed to think of something easy to understand, something easy to understand and set up that would attract lots of publicity and have a good name. The result was the Million Dollar Homepage – a website with a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; its image-based links were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks.
The purchasers of these pixel blocks provided small images to be displayed on them, a URL to which the images were linked, and a slogan displayed when hovering a cursor over the link.
The website aimed to sell all the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator. The Wall Street Journal has commented that the site inspired other websites that sell pixels. Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an Internet phenomenon.
milliondollarhomepage.com’s Business Objective:
Alex had this basic idea, the most straightforward a man could think of, one dollar per pixel per month for a million pixels on the homepage (I’m guessing you’ve done the math already).
Alex paid only £50 for the domain name and a basic web hosting package. The only investment made to kick start is a million dollars every month.
The main objective was to attract maximum traffic of every kind, as the website had no target audience criteria, and eventually convince potential buyers for leads. Massive approach at the minimum cost possible.
Marketing Strategy adopted by milliondollarpage.com:
Alex followed the ‘Word Of Mouth’ marketing strategy. The first blocks Alex sold to his brothers and some friends.
When he had more than $1,000, he paid for a press release, which the BBC spotted.
At this point, the news had traveled across the Internet, as one person after another e-mailed their friends, boasting about this fantastic website.
This generated more interest from advertisers worldwide– and the whole thing took off.
Later he employed a press officer to help generate publicity and increase sales in the US. He also spent a week there, giving interviews.
Four months later, Alex auctioned his last block of pixels on eBay. His total earnings from the enterprise exceeded $ 1 million (around (£545,000 at the time).
Results achieved by milliondollarhomepage.com:
The result cited by Alex was obvious, a million dollars every month for an investment as low as approximately £50.
No sooner did he auction his last pixels on eBay for a whopping $38,100, placed by MillionDollarWeightLoss.com, an online store selling diet-related products, than he fixed a monthly income of a million dollars.
It’s been a decade since the site is alive and running in full swing.
Though a few recent studies prove 22% of the site is dead (non-functioning links), which accounts for 221,900 of the million pixels—$221,900 worth of real estate, assuming the pixels have kept their value in the last eight years.
Learnings for aspiring entrepreneurs:
What fascinates me most about milliondollarhomepage.com, besides its apparent genius, is its deep look into psychology, marketing, and constraints: money, color, placement, promotion, proximity, message, fonts, risk, gut, pictures vs. words, etc.
You could study this for a day and learn more than you could in an entire college marketing class. There are now many copycat sites, but these are far less likely to be successful than Alex’s, simply because he was a ‘first.’
To learn in-depth knowledge of digital marketing, you may enroll in a digital marketing institute & indulge in paid advertising, conversion rate optimization, SEO, video advertising, and several others.
Therefore, joining the suitable Digital Marketing Course can enable you to master Digital Marketing like an expert.
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FAQ’s
1. Who invented the million-dollar homepage?
Alex Tew
In 2005 – Alex Tew conceived a website named “The Million Dollar Homepage.” A student from Wiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education.
The home page comprises a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; its image-based links were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks.
2. Who invented calm?
Calm was founded on May 4, 2012, by Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew. Michael Acton Smith is the co-founder and co-CEO of the wellness app Calm. The company generated $22 million in revenue in 2017 and reached an annual revenue run rate of $75 million.
3. How much did Alex Tew make?
Alex Tew made about $700k after taxes and internet fame. His instant success was a confidence boost.
