Neworld, Great relationships build great brands

January 2006, 21-year-old Alex Tew sat in his bedroom in Wilshire, watching the final pixels fill up on a computer screen. He was about to become a millionaire.

All it took was $50, 2 days of his time, and an idea that in his own words was a…  “get-rich-quick scheme that actually worked.” It started when he asked himself  how can I make a million dollars? Then came the idea: he’d start a webpage with a million pixels that could be purchased for $1 a pixel. Two days and $50 in domain fees later, the Million Dollar Homepage was born.

The idea was simple: for a minimum of $100, an advertiser could buy a 100-pixel block (10 x 10 grid) and display an image or logo of their choosing, with a hyperlink out to their website (no porn allowed).

One month in, Tew had raked in $250k, and was receiving 65k hits per day. By the end of October, he’d made $500k from more than 1.4k advertisers ranging from Tenacious D to penis enlargement companies. By New Year’s Eve, 999k pixels had been purchased. The last 1k on auctioned on eBay; MillionDollarWeightLoss.com bid $38k, bringing his grand total to $1.04m.

It’s still online if you want a gander, in all its nonresponsive glory!

These days after a few non-starters, Tew now owns the very successful app Calm, which has 600k paying subscribers, recently valued at $250m.