The Million Dollar Homepage, and what comes after pixels.
In 2005 a student sold a single web page one pixel at a time and made a million dollars in five months. Twenty years later most of what he sold no longer works. This is what happened, and why the1440.com sells minutes instead.
The numbers
| Created by | Alex Tew, 21, a student from Wiltshire, England |
| Launched | 26 August 2005 |
| What was sold | A 1,000 × 1,000 grid: one million pixels |
| Price | $1 a pixel, in 10 × 10 blocks — $100 minimum |
| Last 1,000 pixels | Auctioned on eBay in January 2006 for $38,100 |
| Total gross | $1,037,100 in about five months |
| Dead links by 2017 | 547 of 2,816 (Harvard Library Innovation Lab) |
How it worked
Alex Tew needed money for university. On 26 August 2005 he put up a page with a 1,000 × 1,000 grid and sold it at a dollar a pixel, in 10 × 10 blocks, so the smallest purchase was $100. Each buyer uploaded a tiny image and a link. The page itself was the story: the fuller it got, the more the press wrote about it, and the more people wanted a square on the thing everyone was talking about.
The final 1,000 pixels went to eBay in January 2006 and sold for $38,100, taking the total to $1,037,100. By 2006 Tew said there were hundreds of sites selling pixels. Most of them are gone, because the first one was the news and the copies were not.
Why the links rotted
A pixel on the Million Dollar Homepage was sold forever, but the businesses behind them were not. By 2017 the Harvard Library Innovation Lab counted 547 of the 2,816 links as dead and 489 more redirecting somewhere else; the BBC put link rot at around 40% in 2019. The page is a time capsule: a permanent ad for things that stopped existing.
It also had a quieter problem. A thousand tiny logos share one screen, so no single buyer is ever really seen. You bought a place in the crowd.
Selling time instead of space
the1440.com keeps the part that worked — a fixed, finite thing, sold once, in public — and flips the rest. Instead of a million pixels that last forever, it sells the 1,440 minutes of each day, and each minute gets the whole screen.
| Million Dollar Homepage | the1440.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | A 10 × 10 pixel block | One minute of the day (UTC) |
| Screen | Shared with thousands | The whole page, alone |
| Lasts | Forever | Sixty seconds |
| Supply | One million pixels, once | 1,440 minutes, every day |
| Price | $100 minimum | $2–$5 a minute |
| Results | Not published | Every click in a public log |
Because the minute ends, the buyer has a reason to tell people when it airs — “I’m on at 15:04 UTC” — and every buyer becomes a promoter. An unsold minute shows DEAD AIR and is gone for good, which is the honest version of a sold-out sign.
Questions
What was the Million Dollar Homepage?
A website launched on 26 August 2005 by Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from Wiltshire, England. It sold a 1,000 × 1,000 pixel grid at $1 a pixel, in blocks of 100, and each buyer placed an image that linked to their site. It grossed $1,037,100.
Is the Million Dollar Homepage still online?
Yes, the page is still up, but many of its links are not. A 2017 review by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab found 547 of the 2,816 links dead, and the BBC reported in 2019 that about 40% of links suffered from link rot.
Are there sites like the Million Dollar Homepage today?
Pixel-grid copies appeared by the hundred in 2005 and 2006 and most are gone. One that takes the idea in a different direction is the1440.com, which sells time instead of space: each of the 1,440 minutes in a day is sold once, and the buyer gets the whole front page for sixty seconds.
How is the1440.com different from the Million Dollar Homepage?
The Million Dollar Homepage sold a permanent square on a shared page. the1440.com sells one minute with the entire screen: no neighbours, nothing else on the page, and then it ends. Minutes cost $2 to $5 and every click is published in a public log.