Pixel Advertising – Is There Any More Money To Be Made?
Inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage where Alex Tew made $1,000,000 in just five months, a lot of hopefuls are copying the idea of pixel advertising. But is there any more money to be made on this idea?
In August 2005 a young Englishman by the name of Alex Tew got a bright idea. He wanted to make money on the internet to pay for his studies. The idea had to be simple, not take too much of his time and be able to generate a lot of money. Selling advertising space could generate money, but the traditional way of advertising with banners on a webpage simply wouldn’t do. To make a lot of money, a lot of webpages, space and time would be needed. So Alex thought of selling really small ads – and a lot of them – on one webpage. Alex created an image made of 1,000 times 1,000 pixels – a total of 1,000,000 – and intended to sell each pixel for $1. This one image could fit to one webpage and would generate $1,000,000 if all pixels were sold. And thus, the Million Dollar Homepage was born. Alex – like any good salesman – started by pestering friends and family and urging them to buy some pixels from him. As he started getting orders, he made the very wise decision of alerting the media of his idea. The media liked the idea of the entrepreneurial student trying to make money on the internet for his studies by coming up with an idea that simple. Alex played the media very well indeed and appeared in print, radio, TV and on the internet. As the story picked up two months into the project, Alex hired a media consultant to help him handle the frenzy. It took only 5 months until the 1,000,000 pixels were sold and the $1,000,000 were made. Quickly a lot of copycats copied Alex’ idea and many more have followed. It is now estimated that there are now more than 4,000 sites selling pixels in a way similar to the Million Dollar Homepage. Only a very tiny fraction of these are actually making any money, so why is that?
The original page owes its success primarily to the publicity it got in the media. As any new copycat website has no or very little news value, why would anyone pick up on the story? As there are now more than 4,000 very similar sites, how could any one site generate enough traffic for advertisers to be interested in buying advertising space?
There are slight variations over the basic business idea of pixel advertising. Some pixel websites now offer free pixels and premium pixels with better location than the free ones. Some websites offer pixels on a picture of the moon or a map of a certain country or region. Other websites offer intricate ways of trading pixels or pixels at $0.01 or less. Currently it appears that the pixel websites offering free pixels are generating the most traffic. It is likely that the majority of this traffic is from advertisers wanting to make use of the offer for free inbound links to their website. In my view, there will never be another website making any significant amount of money on simply selling pixels, no matter what variation over the basic idea they may follow. There are however still business opportunities related to pixel advertising. First of all, a number of websites are offering scripts which can support pixel websites. Those who want to create a pixel website can purchase a script which provides a ready made website with automated payment handling, uploading of pixel ads etc. A large number of new pixel websites have been created with such scripts and this area of business still appear to be reasonably brisk.
Another area related to pixel advertising is websites catering for the ‘pixel community’ – administrators of pixel websites and those dreaming of making their own site. Such internet users are keen on promoting, voting, categorizing and comparing their own websites to others’. Websites likes The Pixel Wars list a large number of pixel websites and allows its visitors to cast their vote for websites they like the best or least. They also have a forum where pixel website administrators can share ideas or discuss the latest trends in pixel advertising. A visit to alexa.com reveals that a website like The Pixel Wars has decent visitor numbers and that it may therefore be possible to generate decent advertising income on it.
It is anyone’s guess what the future of pixel advertising will be. In my view, no new site selling pixels will ever make any significant revenue. To make money on the internet, there are plenty other more profitable roads to follow.
Data Security Still Not Taken Seriously
A worrying trend is emerging amongst organizations and enterprises that are only concerned with external data breaches, completely ignoring the internal threat. This is according to Simon Bain, CTO of search specialist Simplexo.“Big Data is very much a hot topic right now. There doesn’t seem to be a day that goes by when we’re not being spoken to, about, or at on the subject. With this in mind, I wanted to conduct a swift survey to see how seriously organizations are taking the threat of data breaches in relation to big data. It was nothing too scientific: a quick internet search of the terms ‘Big Data’ and ‘security’ brought up 53,600,000 results in 0.31 seconds. A positive start, I thought initially, but as I dug deeper my optimism began to fade. “The results largely featured companies advertising how they can analyze big data sets to see where a threat may arise from. So, in essence, nothing really about security at all, just about how to sell software to analyze web traffic and determine where a hack might occur. Now this might seem all well and good, but when you consider that nowadays the majority of serious attacks are no longer web based but internal, it does raise a few worrying questions.
“Generally, organizations handle web security rather well through DNS traps, firewalls, and various other defenses. However, what is harder to prevent is an internal attack. Look at some of the recent examples in the press – the attacks on banks, for example – and you’ll start to see a pattern emerging. This is what I was hoping to see when I started this little experiment. However, with the exception of a few references, there is no suggestion that this is being acknowledged or taken seriously – shocking doesn’t even come close.”
Bain continued: “Security along with accessibility should be at the forefront of all new projects and technologies. Earlier this week, I was thumbing through the newspaper when I came across a startling story about a police officer, with access to license plate surveillance data, who pleaded guilty to bribing people based on their vehicle’s license plate being recorded at various ‘unsavory’ locations. Now, I’m sure that officer did not spend his nights wondering how he could access the system. This view of hackers is so outdated it’s almost Jurassic!
“The focus needs to be on the current bout of attacks, and seeing how these can be prevented or at the very least made harder to execute. This cannot happen until the owners of the data start to take the risks seriously, and also start talking more openly about data breaches. From this we can all then learn from each other’s experiences and mistakes.”
Signs your Web Host is Changing and NOT for the Better
If you woke up one morning and couldn’t access your website (or maybe your blog), what would you do? Consider these scenarios: you would have tried using other browsers and your site was still inaccessible; maybe you tried a different Internet connection with the same result; changed the modem DNS but got no response; you called some colleagues and found out they had the same problem; so you finally ping and you did get a reply: unknown host. This is one of the worst nightmares for a website owners! You have to face up to the fact that your web host plays a major role in building your online presence. Search engines may have difficulty crawling your content and cause your rankings to plummet; and worse, you may lose on potential customers, if your website is frequently down. Simply put, the most important aspect for you to develop a successful online presence and visibility is to make sure you have a quality web host that is sensitive to your business needs.
The primary and crucial concern of anyone doing business online is entrusting your web hosting needs to a reliable company. You have to be watchful and alert for any signs that your web host may be changing – and not for the better; before the situation gets out of hand. Adequate knowledge and information are certainly helpful in identifying impending problematic incidents. And it is certainly smart to also heed some good advice from other people who’ve been in the business longer than you’ve been.
Here are some signs that your current web host may be heading south.
Massive and Frequent Downtimes. You almost always hear web hosting companies make guarantees of 99% uptime or web hosting presence. Its an alluring proposition to customers, of course. However, downtime does happen even to the best and biggest web hosting providers; they’re inevitable in certain cases. It is when it becomes too frequent and with longer duration that these downtimes should start to worry you. You may be losing a lot of potential customers (read: revenues) with every minute that your site is down. Get in touch with your provider or their technical support and demand to know the real score.
Website takes forever to load. There are a couple of reasons why load time matters and in fact critical to establishing your online status. First, it plays a key role and wields a lot of influence on your websites search engine ranking. The second, more important factor is the very limited attention span that an average visitor will give your website to grab their interest which is a mere 8 seconds. If your site is not up by that time, chances are, these visitors are gone before the 8th second without even seeing what your website can offer. If your host is giving your site this detrimental effect, you better begin checking your options.
Website gets hacked more often. Most website owners focus on uptime and bandwidths when selecting their web host; but tend to neglect the significance of security in the whole website business. If your web host has poor security set up, it could leave your website vulnerable to attacks from hackers and other malicious mischief-maker and even unlawful activities, such as identity thieves and the likes. As the owner, you have to ensure that your web host employs the latest security technology to safeguard and protect your site from such unwarranted attacks.
Customer support is missing. Now you see them; now you don’t. If you’re experiencing intermittent instead of 24/7/365 technical support from your web host, there’s a real chance that they’re cutting back on their customer service by either reducing the number of available hours for customer care or outsourcing the service.
Do you notice that there’s only one individual answering your support tickets? Is your web host provider or its technical support team not responding to your e-mail or not returning your phone calls? You may have reason to worry here. Your online visibility and presence goes beyond your own time zone; if your site becomes inaccessible for whatever reason, your web host provider is expected to get it back up immediately, regardless of what time it is. If you’re not getting this kind of support, its a sure indication that your web host provider is turning out for the worse. The Identification and ResolutionYou may be experiencing other signs that indicate declining efficiency from your web hosting company. You are the best judge for determining whether you are getting the kind of service you expect from a good web hosting provider or not. Don’t be drastic in your decisions though. It is always prudent to gather all details and consider all factors first. That way you are able to handle things in a manner that may be beneficial to all parties concerned; and eventually make a well-informed decision.
.Host Announces Top Global Players As Pioneer Players – Landrush
Radix, Asia’s largest new gTLD applicant, announced top players of the global hosting community as Pioneers of the .Host namespace, which rolled in to Landrush on 26th August ’14.
Pioneer Partners List for Landrush The Pioneer lineup includes big international names like MediaTemple, Bluehost, OVH, Arvixe, and the UK2 Group, in addition to regional leaders such as Natro (Turkey) and UOL (Brazil), HostPapa (Canada), Blacknight (Ireland). Several top global wholesale registrars, such as OpenSRS, ResellerClub and InternetX have also signed on as Pioneer Partners. [sam id=”7″ codes=”true”]”Jumping on the .Host bandwagon was a logical choice for Media Temple and we are pleased to have a domain extension that specifically serves our industry,” said Jacob Shin, VP of Marketing at Media Temple, a premium web hosting subsidiary of GoDaddy, and one of the first companies to sign on to what has shaped into an elite roster. “We’re seeing a huge amount of interest for .Host among our global network of resellers,” said Dave Woroch, EVP Wholesale at OpenSRS. “The Pioneer Program has been a great way to drum up anticipation for the launch, and we’re excited to move forward.”
Leading news and reviews site FindMyHost will pioneer the namespace on www.FindMy.Host. Hosting-Review and eBridge, both leading affiliate marketers and now .Host Pioneers, look forward to the improved search engine rankings .Host stands to afford. Each of the .Host Pioneers recognize the value of .Host for the industry and have committed to helping in making it a successful and viable namespace.
Already, .Host Pioneers have explored innovative ways to use the domain. Bluehost, for example, acquired the domain name Pink.Host for later use during its breast cancer awareness program, a clever way to adapt the namespace while enhancing its premier brand. Meanwhile, FindMyHost has acquired domains such as FindMyCloud.Host in order to specifically target industry niches.
“We’ve long been a part of the hosting industry,” said Viram Lodhia, .Host Category Manager, Radix, “and now we’re looking forward to giving back to the community. Thanks to all our Pioneers, we will go a long way toward driving awareness of .Host’s possibilities and it’s great to see widespread interest in the launch.”
The .Host public Landrush phase began 26th August and will be open till 15th September. First-come, first-serve registrations will be available starting 17th September.