Business Bricks

William Lee says:
As I commented previously in the original post, “…who knows what kind of benefit advertisers will get in terms of link popularity given that some of the most popular websites on the Web (according to the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN) are linking directly to it.” Well, the MDHP is now blessed with a PageRank of 7 after the recent Google update. This is huge in PageRank terms and the search engines (including the big 3; Google, Yahoo and MSN) will take a link from such a pillar of the web into consideration when they’re working out where to rank your website in their search results. That’s if the engines don’t put in any kind of dampening measures, of course. Considering the market value of a one-way link from a PR7 homepage, $100 for a 5-year link is a bargain!
by William Lee on 21 Oct

Nick Butcher says:
Alex Tew has certainly done well but as everyone now appreciates; his concept does have many flaws. I do not believe that any of the blatant copy cats will ever do as well. Alex had a good story to start with (being a student etc) which helped catapult his media presence and as a result drive traffic to his site. Once this dies down (and it will) I think that will be the end of his site. What you need to do is build a site that appeals to every internet user (not just the commercial ones) and to take his concept further by building a site that will out last any media hype or search engine rankings.
by Nick Butcher on 23 Oct

Andy Bell says:
I thought this was a bit of a silly idea when it was first mentioned but William, you convinced me. I just bought my little patch of the million dollar home page.
by Andy Bell on 23 Oct

student james says:
Matt Cutts has already said that PR is unlikely to be passed on - ie: no PR will be passed….
by student james on 24 Oct

Matt Weston says:
Just to explain the last comment a bit more -
Matt Cutts is the “Mick Jagger of search”. He talks a bit about The Million Dollar Homepage in this interview. Oh, and PR = PageRank.
by Matt Weston on 24 Oct

Annette Sharp says:
Nick Butcher is probably right when he says the hype over MDHP will die down quickly enough - but heck, so what? Alex Tew now has a considerable amount of cash, not only to fund his way through college, but to fund his next online venture. And the one after that, probably! Anyone who gets that level of online success so quickly will have their thinking caps on already about what to do next….
by Annette Sharp on 24 Oct

William Lee says:
Well, he did and he didn’t. Strictly speaking, Matt Cutts (a man from Google) didn’t say explicitly that PageRank won’t be passed… “I hope that the people buying pixels don’t assume that those pixels will flow PageRank. :)”. However, even if that was the case and there was a Google dampening measure in place there are still other search engines to consider. Google is big, but it shouldn’t be considered the be all and end all of search.

As for a flawed concept… If any of my flawed concepts ever gross as much as the MDHP then you can be sure I’ll be building more flaws :) It’s quite interesting to see a mini industry being created on the back of the MDHP including clones, variations on a theme and even ready-made scripts so you too could have your very own pixel empire. Regardless, the MDHP has been a success. Whether or not it’s a concept that could be repeated by others, I guess not, but only time will tell and I’ve already seen a fair number of derivatives on the theme doing quite well.

As for building a site that will appeal to every Internet user, just how do you do that and would you want to? Surely, you can’t please everyone all of the time can you? Target everyone, hit no one?

Andy, I’d be interested in knowing what, if anything, you get for your $100. Me, I’ve had numerous begging emails and an extra backlink registered in some of the major search engines. A waste of money some might say, but why be so pessimistic? At the very least I’d see it as rewarding ingenuity. :)
by William Lee on 24 Oct