Can’t Get Rich

Some of you may remember the Pixel Ad craze from a couple of years ago. In my opinion, the concept of per-pixel advertisement is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of Internet marketing (and that’s saying a lot), but it worked pretty well for one guy.

The original

Remember the Million Dollar Homepage? Back in late 2005, some broke British guy created a 1000×1000 grid of gray pixels on his home page. Shortly after doing that, he decided to try selling those pixels for $1 a piece. Surprisingly enough, his idea worked and on January 11th 2006, he sold his final 1,000 pixels, becoming a millionaire. Pretty smart.

Then what happened?

Even before the original was sold out, the copycats went to work. Thousands upon thousands of imitators were created, seemingly unable to grasp the value of originality. Here’s one example. This guy has SLASHED PRICES by selling each pixel for 10 cents! Awesome, huh? Guess we’ll be hearing another success story soon, right?

Why you should care

That’s all ancient history though, right? I mean, it’s been over a year since the original sold out. That little fact hasn’t stopped the imitators, though. This web directory lists over 2,500 pixel ad sites. 2,500. Why are people still making these? They’re not successful, and they never will be.

The bottom line

The Million Dollar Homepage did it, and they’re the only ones that ever will. Pixel ads are old news and a waste of space.

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Here’s an interesting new site. SomethingStore.com is an online store that sells you…something. For just $10, you get something completely random. It might be an iPod, it might be a paper clip. Who knows? At the time of this writing, they’ve sold nearly 400 somethings, or $4,000. Whether they have turned a profit or not is unknown.

Why they’ll probably be successful

Everybody loves being surprised, and if you look at the something tracker, you’ll notice that some of these surprise gifts are very nice indeed. Even more than being surprised, everybody loves to get something for nothing, or at least something for very little. Look at the something tracker. Right now, I see an MP3 player, a camcorder, and Halo 3. All of those items cost over $50, so spending only $10 seems like a great deal, right? Actually, this site seems more like a lottery than a store. Not necessarily a bad thing, as the lottery is very successful.

Sound familiar?

You may remember a certain fad that swept eBay a few years ago. Someone auctioned a ‘mystery envelope’, which was said to contain some valuable object. It doesn’t really matter what was in there, because the copycats took notice and suddenly eBay was flooded with mystery envelopes, boxes, and other such containers. Doing a search right now for ‘Mystery Envelope’ pulls up 309 auctions, so the fad still hasn’t died down.

The bottom line

Everybody loves to get something for nothing, and the creators of The Something Store are banking on that fact. Best of luck to you guys, and I’ll bet the rest of you wish you’d thought of that.

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