The Million Dollar Homepage, Alex Tew’s successful project, as well as his next project, Pixelotto, are most often viewed as clever viral marketing ploys. However, his ideas of selling ads on a site with very little or no other content than ads themselves may have started an ugly trend.
Lately I’ve noticed several websites which have a different take on the concept, and many of them seem to be pyramid schemes, which are illegal in most countries.
Take a look at this site: www.stepuptoamillion.com. If you start with the number 1 and double it, you need 21 steps to reach a million. So, the idea behind this website is this: put up 21 banners, start with 1 pound and double the price for each one, with everyone who buys a banner having a chance to win a million pounds (when you add up the numbers, you get 1.999.999 pounds total), while the rest of the money goes to the owner of the website. In this case, the owner claims that the money will go to fight “extreme poverty”, but it makes no difference, as he would still benefit if this idea were to succeed (which I sincerely doubt).
Here’s another similar site, currently “closed for repairs”: MMMZR
This idea seems fishy to say the least. Check out these Wikipedia quotes on pyramid schemes (you can read the rest of the entry here):
“The essential idea behind each scam is that the individual makes only one payment, but is promised to somehow receive exponential benefits from other people as a reward.”
“The distinguishing feature of these schemes is the fact that the product being sold has little to no intrinsic value of its own or is sold at a price out of line with its fair market value.”
Actually, Pixelotto itself is not that far off this definition, and it would be interesting to say what a legal expert has to say on this subject. Personally, I don’t have the legal knowledge to claim that any site is a pyramid scheme, so I’m not making such claims here. But I am suspicious.
What I do know, is that I don’t like the whole idea. Presenting banners and pixels (on an otherwise mostly empty site) as advertising is quite misleading. The business model is basically this: Give me money, and i’ll give you good traffic. How will I get traffic? By you (and others) giving me money. I don’t see who actually benefits here except for the owner of the website and the one person that gets a lucky strike. I hope that people will soon realize that except for a very small minority of interesting projects, the rest is just trash.
I didn’t think Tews would be able to pull off another million dollar homepage but he’s proving me wrong with Pixelotto.
@Ryan: he’s actually doing horribly with Pixelotto. He got everyone fooled with his first $100.000, but now it’s stalling around $150.000.
Alex tew at Pixelotto.com is giving away just $100,000 when/if he fills up the pixels on the site. The other site you mention www.stepuptoamillion.com is giving it all away to charity, roughhy $1.9 million to be exact so to be fair I hope it does well as the guy doesn’t make any money from it. I won’t be buying in though as I cant afford it, but there’s plenty out there that can.
@Daren: Where the money goes in the end is not crucial in this case. Hypothetically speaking, if you steal money and give it to charity, it doesn’t mean you’re not a thief.
It is crucial Stan - Money always falls into the hands of the rich and not a lot goes to charity. The gap between rich and poor is getting bigger. I was in reading this guys blog and if everyone done something like what this guy is doing wouldn’t the world be a better place? Nobody is getting forced to buy the space on this site probably no one else will buy the space, but that’s not the point. It’s websites like www.stepuptoamillion.com, which are not in for profit should be encouraged and not frowned upon…
I don’t understand the rest of the reply you gave, how is the guy stealing? If that’s the case are all other charities out there are stealing too?
@Daren: i was speaking hypothetically. Look at it this way. Let’s suppose someone starts a pyramid scheme, which, I hope we both agree, are illegal (and with a good reason). If that person gives all the money to charity, does it make it OK? I don’t think so. The people in the pyramid still got screwed.
As you’ve said, in the particular case of stepuptoamillion.com, I think the idea will fail anyway, as there’s absolutely no way anyone will give a million bucks (or more than a few hundred, for that matter) to have a banner on a website with absolutely no content, but I might be wrong.
But, regardless of whether it fails or succeeds, and regardless whether half of the money goes to charity or not, the concept is suspicious, because the majority of people who participate will gain nothing out of it. There’s no product here. Of course, no one is forcing them to participate. But then again, no one is forcing people to participate in pyramid schemes, and they’re still illegal.
I do totally agree with you, pyramid schemes are illegal because of the fact they are misleading and people do think they will get something out of them. But, take another look at this guys site and you can see there’s nothing misleading abut it. It’s clear to all who want to get involved that there is a 1 in 21 chance of getting the top prize, should it go to the top that is.
I wouldn’t say it’s a pyramid scheme, but I would say it’s definitely a ‘gambling site’ and with such great odds (I’m a small time gambler) I believe this guy could get to the top if he markets the site to that industry. There is no way the general public will get involved now and only those who like to gamble “High” (and have the money) might get involved. I’m not 100% sure what way this site will go, but I would have got involved at the bottem if I came across it earlier. I probably would have paid a few quid and bought a space…you never know.
There are so many of these sites showing up every day, most of them are simply imitators. I think that they are a waste of space and bandwidth, but I am sure I would think differently if I owned one that made it big!