Monday, November 28, 2005

The Million Dollar Homepage


The five stages of dealing with The Million Dollar Homepage

1. Denial: "What? This guy is selling advertising in a page which shows nothing but advertising? That can't be true."

2. Resentment: "You mean people -- TONS of people -- actually check out this site? That's ridiculous! It's a cluttered page full of everything that's wrong about internet advertising! And people are clicking on it! You people won't click on banners that go along with content but will click on a flea-sized picture of Che Guevara (upper-left corner)? What's wrong with you all?!"

3. Bargaining: "Maybe it's really a lesson in advertising, and that homepage is really a metaphor for the cluttered advertising landscape that we deal with every day. If I can bring it up in a conversation with a client maybe he'll understand that even the best-looking ad will probably be lost in clutter if all you can afford is a 10x10 pixel square."

4. Depression: "The now-famous guy behind the site is 21 years old and, as of today, has sold 62.4% of the page. Which means that he's probably made a good $600K in the last few months. What was I doing when I was 21 years old? Wait, I know -- getting myself into debt. And drinking."

5. Blogging: "I should write a post about this."

That's Genius,

HMK

Thanks to the kids at American Copywriter

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:27 PM

    You missed setp #6 which is "Start your own pixel ad site or remix it into your current site setup." Which is pretty much what we did with MP3Board.com. We reworked to site with the pixel ad concept except that we only accept ads from music/band/podcast/cd/mp3 related advertisers. In our case I think that the more advertisers we have the more valuable our site will be for users because it will provide a one stop directory of music oriented sites. Half the fun of the MillionDollarHomepage is hunting through the pixels for a site you're interested in. We figure this is probably a good way to discover new artists.

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  2. Anonymous11:27 AM

    Why didn't you think of this first?
    Love, Your Wife

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  3. Anonymous9:41 AM

    Makes me want to believe that Internet and entertainment are derived from the same latin root. Watching the surf is entertaining in the manner of Zen. Clicking pixels is entertaining in the manner of Macy's. Some day's I'd choose Internet, some surf. How do I sell a million waves?

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