Second-hand Pixels?
Happy New Year!
Somebody who will certainly be celebrating right now is Alex Tew. His Million Dollar Homepage closed its doors to new orders on New Year's Eve. They are sold out! One million pixels sold between Aug to Dec - quite an achievement.
Why am I interested? Well, Travel Lists has a single block advert (100 pixels) and as sales reached the 999,000 mark there was a noticeable leap in traffic from that ad. In his blog, Alex reported that on Friday morning the site was getting 25,000 unique visitors an hour!
It made me think.
The idea behind the site has always been that it would stay online for a minimum 5 years. Given that, A) there appears to be a huge pent up, and now un-fulfilled, demand for Alex's pixels; and B) that over the next few years existing advertisers will disappear or their marketing needs will change; I see the potential for a buoyant market in second-hand pixels.
As to all those copycat sites. I haven't really changed my mind (a million copycat creeps). I see the arguement that some might be congratulated for taking the original idea and making it better. But I still hope they don't succeed. It's like repeating a good joke or a story - when you hear it a second time, it's not as good. When you hear it a third time, it isn't interesting at all. At 300 times, it's both irritating and insulting.
Somebody who will certainly be celebrating right now is Alex Tew. His Million Dollar Homepage closed its doors to new orders on New Year's Eve. They are sold out! One million pixels sold between Aug to Dec - quite an achievement.
Why am I interested? Well, Travel Lists has a single block advert (100 pixels) and as sales reached the 999,000 mark there was a noticeable leap in traffic from that ad. In his blog, Alex reported that on Friday morning the site was getting 25,000 unique visitors an hour!
It made me think.
The idea behind the site has always been that it would stay online for a minimum 5 years. Given that, A) there appears to be a huge pent up, and now un-fulfilled, demand for Alex's pixels; and B) that over the next few years existing advertisers will disappear or their marketing needs will change; I see the potential for a buoyant market in second-hand pixels.
As to all those copycat sites. I haven't really changed my mind (a million copycat creeps). I see the arguement that some might be congratulated for taking the original idea and making it better. But I still hope they don't succeed. It's like repeating a good joke or a story - when you hear it a second time, it's not as good. When you hear it a third time, it isn't interesting at all. At 300 times, it's both irritating and insulting.
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