Truth In Advertising – Million Dollar Homepage Makes A Million

It was 7th on the list of “OneDegree’s Top 20 posts in 2005”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/21/one-degrees-top-stories-of-2005. So what’s been happening with “The Million Dollar Home Page”:http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ since “Ken’s September 9th story?”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/09/09/the-million-dollar-home-page.
Recently I came across this site again and found out that Alex Tew, the 21-year old student from Wiltshire, England had sold 999,000 pixels for $1 each. That’s over 99% of the way to making this a true $1,000,000 home page! The last 1,000 pixels have been offered up for auction on – what else? – “eBay”:http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5652179487&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:UK:31. As I write this the current bid is over US$160,000 and there are only 2 days left. Even if bidding were to stop today and Alex gets the current bid, the Million Dollar Home Page is actually going to be worth $1,159,000, a tidy 16% premium.
This certainly is a million dollar idea. Plus, Alex has been sent many job offers. After all, if he can earn a cool million with only an idea and a simple website, imagine what he could do with real resources and a team of people?

But before you get carried away, there are LOTS of copycat sites out there.
There are even directory sites for this “category” of websites including “directories”:http://www.millionpixeltopsites.com and “traffic ranking sites”:http://www.pixeltrafficwatcher.com.
And for the greedier set there are the *billion* dollar sites like onebilliondollarhomepage.com and billiondollarhome.com (50% of proceeds go to charity… $11 raised so far).
There’s even a reality-based TV show called “Million Dollar Idea”:http://www.milliondollaridea.tv but there’s a lawsuit about that one since “Simon Cowell”http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101562/ of Pop Idol and “American Idol”:http://www.idolonfox.com/ fame seems to have started his own reality series based on something already done (and trademarked) in Minneapolis.
The Internet is still largely uncharted space. So what’s the next big idea that will make someone rich without breaking any laws?
Your guess is as good as mine. I am also pretty sure if you have that idea you wouldn’t easily share it with One Degree readers. All I know is that 2006 will be a great year for watching what happens online. It’s pretty much a done deal that the original Million Dollar Home Page will surpass Alex Tew’s wildest goal (did he *really* think he could get a million bucks by selling pixels on his site?). What’s next for this kind of “webpreneur”?