Million Dollar Grind

If you’re one of the thousands of students that started school  this semester you’re probably starting to feel the financial  strain that comes with being a student.  Tuition, books, GAS,  and all the other good stuff that comes with higher education  starts to add up.  Before long you start asking yourself “How  can I make money to pay for school?”

Back in 2005 Alex Tew,  a 21 year old from Wiltshire, England,  faced the same  dilemma.  He didn’t want to go to school and graduate with a  huge amount of debt.  Instead, he came up with an idea to sell 100,000,000 pixels for $1 each.  The plan was to sell ad space in the form of a 10 x 10 or larger block to businesses.  Each block would display the company logo and link back to their website.  With a little web design experience and $100, Alex built milliondollarhomepage in two days.  To get the website going he convinced his family and friends to buy the first 1,000 pixels.  He took the money from the first 1,000 pixels he sold to market the website by sending out press releases to local media.  The media ran with the story, and so did bloggers, chat rooms and online forums.  In two weeks the site sold 40,000 pixels.  The 100,000,000 pixels were sold in only five months.  The last 1,000 pixels sold for $38,100 on ebay bringing the grand total to  $1,037,100.  

Can you think of 100,000,000 items to sell for a $1 a piece?