A Million to One

Twists and oddities also abound: The Million Pixel Gallery tries to sell art and advertising from galleries and museums, the Cover Up Osama Bin Laden site sells pixel blocks to obliterate Osama's face from the screen, and the Million Booby Homepage, well, appears to still be in the training-bra stage of development.

Few if any of the me-Tew'ers are likely to make a million dollars or even come close. Many remain barren sites without a single ad. One of the first was the Million Dollar Web Page created by Anthony Van Noordwyk, an Omaha Internet techie who launched a couple weeks after marveling at Tew's homepage. But while his unique visitors' count is up from four the first day to 2,115 Monday, he has sold just 60 ads.

"Nobody is anywhere close to being as successful as Alex's original," says Van Noordwyk, 35, who counts his sales so far in the tens of thousands. "Now that Alex's Web page is full, maybe some of the more popular pixel ad sites will catch on a bit. I am not holding my breath but I am crossing my fingers."

While a few pixel pages are dedicated to the Internet's biggest money-making venture, most copycat pages draw the line on pornography. "We had to turn them away because other advertisers wouldn't advertise," says Josh Moser, co-creator of the Million Quarter Webpage, which sells pixel blocks for 25 cents per pixel.

"This is probably going to be a fad," says Moser, 31, a Detroit Web site developer whose site went live a month after Tew's and now has 400 advertisers.

Including sales on their new site, PixelGiveaway.com, he and partner Jeremy Mlynarek, 29, have sold more than $85,000 in ads, Moser says.

Gareth "Gaz" Thomas, a 24-year-old biotechnology doctorate student from North Wales, United Kingdom, uses sex appeal to sell one-penny pixels on his SexyPixelHomepage.com site where ads gradually are blocking out a side view of a naked female torso. "How could an idea that was so unique and different spawn so many dull copycats?" says Thomas, who three months ago didn't know the first thing about creating a Web site, but has sold nearly 100 ads. "I made mine sexy so it would grab attention and it works!"

While Tew thinks the copycats are "quite funny, really," he doesn't like the "rip-off sites" that borrow heavily from his. "I like the ones that put a twist on it and improve the idea," he says, mentioning a favorite, TrumpingAlex.com, which features a photo of Tew with a Donald Trump hairstyle superimposed on his head. "But the one thing that everybody seems to be missing is that it's one of those crazy ideas that only works once. I was first to market and therefore I got 99 percent of the attention. Good luck to the imitators."

If his pixel page has any lasting value in online marketing, Tew believes it's that "very small ads have some sort of future."

And his future? He's putting his business management studies on hold. He's had job offers, business opportunities and a few new ideas he wants to explore. Not to mention a million dollars.

"The lesson is that consumers are willing to go to good ideas, things that are unique, things that are novel," says Tew. "Rather than copy each other, spend time thinking up new things. . . . Creativity works."