Sounds More Like The Million Dollar Headache
from the good-and-bad-attention dept
We avoided all the stories about the “Million Dollar Homepage” because it was obviously one of those internet fads that people will joke about in a few years. Alex Tew deserves credit for thinking up the idea and doing it first, but the amount of copycats is getting pretty silly. This is the type of idea that works for the first person to come up with it and that’s about it. So, to the copycat sites who keep submitting it to us, no, we don’t care that you’re the first such site in Alberta, Canada or that you’re doing it for some charity we’ve never heard of. We didn’t post the original and we really aren’t going to post the copycats. However, since Tew’s success with the project, it appears that he’s been getting attention from the wrong sorts of folks. A bunch of denial of service extortionists took time out from hassling porn and gambling sites, and instead took down the million dollar homepage while demanding cash to get it back up. Of course, if Tew doesn’t pay the extortionists, he may have to pay back some of his advertisers, as one of them is threatening a lawsuit because of the site’s downtime, which didn’t allow their ad (the final one, bought to great fanfare in an eBay auction) didn’t go up immediately. It’s looking like the “easy money” of the million dollar home page has some strings attached to it.
Comments on “Sounds More Like The Million Dollar Headache”
Milliondollar homepage
THe company that wants to sue will likely get even more exposure by doing this or even attempting it. I didn’t knoe the company existed, so i googled it and now I know about it. How many more people will do this.
Sounds like this guy made a MILLION DOLLARS
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mike. He found a way to make (over) a million dollars through advertising on a website with NO CONTENT, only ads. It’s like “wtf? why would anyone go there for more than a second or to, much less bother to click on one of the links?” That’s like a magazine with only advertisements; sounds pretty shitty, right? But guess what, he made it work. I could live for many many years on a million dollars (after taxes). It should be more than enough to pay for college, as well as to repel any litigation.
Also, any site could be attacked and have to deal with lawsuits over lost ad space / time. Seems the most reasonable thing to do would be to grant extra time to the advertiser or to just give some of the money back. Maybe 1% of the payments? Something like that, probably more. Not that hard to solve.
Re: Sounds like this guy made a MILLION DOLLARS
Unlike http://www.gfx.com, which actually sends thousands of people to your website in search of hidden prizes. Now, that’s real value for advertisers. Tons of people come to your site and actually have a reason to read it! Sure they’re not there to buy, but imagine the branding possibility.
Doug
"Million Dollar Homepage"
Dear TechDirt
I have NO idea what you are talking about.
Your account of this matter comment assumes that the reader is fully aware of the issue to which you are referring. I am not.
You make essentailly no effort to provide adequate background to a reader unfamiliarwith this issue; for such a reader (again, I among them, although I am sure that my cohort is vast), your comments amount to nonsense (to be blunt).
I would HIGHLY advise that you henceforth follow simple, well-established rules of journalism, and refrain from posting such “inner circle/in the know” material.
Take care,
Matt
Re: who doesn't know
If you’d plug in your phone line more often you’d know about the million dollar home page. Who doesn’t know about it?
Re: Re: who doesn't know
That’s a silly question. Him of course.
Re: Re: who doesn't know
I know nothing of this.
(10 minutes later)
google told me.
I now understand the article.
I wonder if cnn expects you
to use google to keep up?
Re: Re:
Matt Sherwood:
Your comment seems like a generic response to be placed on many different sites, much like a Fark cliche.
Re: Re:
I can agree with this. I have never heard of this “million dollar home page”. I assume it’s something to do with getting giant page hits to a pure advert site, but that’s merely guesses. I’m reading the linked articles, but the post should really have at least *tried* to mention what it was about.
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
There’s another site you may not have heard of then. It’s called Google. Check it out some time. Type in “Million Dollar Homepage” and click on Google Search. See what kind of results you get.
This isn’t AP or Reuters. It’s geared towards technoly-aware people. It would seem you may not be one of them.
Re: Re:
I would HIGHLY advide that YOU, “Matt”, henceforth follow the simple, well-established rules of the internet and FUCKING GOOGLE IT! It’s been covered ad nauseum by almost every internet tech news site and the Techdirt article even states that it is intentionally vague so as not to give this guy any more (free) publicity.
Seriously, no wonder this world is so full of retards. Everyone wants their information spoon-fed to them.
To write such an eloquent reply, you must be at least reasonably educated (or really good with a thesaurus) so I am sure it’s not too difficult for you to type “Million Dollar Homepage” into Google/Yahoo/MSN/Slashdot/et. al…. or are you just bitchy because your not part of the “inner circle”?
Re: Re: Re:
Ttam Doowrehs …. you’re an idiot…. period
Plus you’re only bitching about people bitching. Get a life.
It was a suggestion to the author and you people had to make him feel like he’s the dumbest motherfucker out there. If that is what it takes to be in your stupid “inner circle” than I don’t want to be in it.
I don’t know what is the deal with these know it all people today. Not only do they pretend they know it all but they make other people feel retarded when they don’t know.
I’m also pretty sure the guy knows how to make a google search. It was just a suggestion to the author.
get a life 🙂
Re: Re: "Inner Circle"
Speaking of Google, I performed a search on “Inner Circle” and they turned out to be a crappy band from the 70’s. I’m glad I’m not part of your gay groupy gangbang “inner circle”. Don’t be a Douchbag Ttam!
Re: Re: Google Million Dollar Homepage
http://fuckinggoogleit.com/
Re: Re: Re: Google Million Dollar Homepage
LOL. I love the justfuckinggoogleit link. I’ll be giving that one out soon!
Re: Re: Re: Another good link
http://turnofftheinternet.com
This doesn’t look or work as good since SP2 and pop-up blocking. But it’s another funny site to sent noobs to.
Re: Re: Re:2 Million Dollar Path -
I went across the web and found this very interesting site named itself Million Dollar Path Homepage. It has interesting logos with American dollar bills, this guy also having lucky prize draws, I might give it a try on buying the ads, since it looks decent, would keep on watching to seeing how it goes, have a look.<BR>http://www.milliondollarpath.com
Re: Re: Re:3 Million Dollar Path -
God damn these “million dollar homepage” spawns (and no i’m not even going to look at this one). I work for a web hosting company and if I have seen one in the last week I have seen 10…
Also to the trumped up dude (cant be bothered to look up the post), this is a techie news site, so you are expected to be a techie to read/understand what its on about, further we techie people expect spelling and grammar checkers to go over everything we type, as this does not happen when we click submit it confuses us, and we cant go back and edit our comments anyway.
LOOK AT IT THIS WAY THOUGH. AT LEAST WE DONT TYPE IN ALL UPPERCASE LIKE YOUR AVERAGE AOL USER. LOL.
never heard of it either
???
Million Dollar Home Page
All (except one),
I am a very busy and prominent person, and really have much bigger and pressing things to worry about than matters such asthese.
(But I will take a bit of time to respond here.)
So no, I do not have the time to “Google search” issues like these.
Judging from the various respones to my comment, I infer that the typical reader of this site is a mid-level “techie”, which is fine, but perhaps unfortunate, in the larger scheme of things. Also, the etiquette here is shocklingly nonexistent, which is simply not the way things are done in the major leagues.
I certainly can glean that very few of you know at all how to write well, which strongly corroborates my inference re: your status in the business world.
Again, take care.
Matt
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
You seem to have arrived at this site assuming its the technology section of the BBC News site (the BBC is a broadcasting company based in the United Kingdom, they provide news and television services).
He’s already commented on the reason in the article as to why there is no prior reference to the Million Dollar Homepage. I hope you realise that this site isn’t around to provide generic, unbiased articles on a wide variety of news topics; its a tech blog for those of us who actually understand what he’s going on about. If you have no idea what he’s talking about in the articles, then you’re browsing the wrong part of the web.
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
You’re so busy that you can’t take the two seconds to google something you don’t understand, yet you can spend minutes at a time writing comments on websites to say how horrible they are for not dumbing it down for you, as well as monitoring the comments for replies and insulting the people and service involved rather than just admitting it would have been simpler to google it to start with.
You must be in management.
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
I agree with Matt. I read Tech Dirt everyday from work and you guys usually give a little background on whats going on. I was just lost on this one. I should not have to come here and then go to google and then come back here to get the story.
p.s. I was just lost on this story only.
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
go to hell matt, and I think I speak for all mid-level techies out there in the world 😉
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
funny how you’re too busy to do a simple google search, but you have all the time in the world to sit here and complain…
Re: Re: Million Dollar Home Page
You all bitch like a bunch of school girls.
I agree that the original post was a bit vague, but the following comments helped clarify. I didn’t know what “The Million Dollar Homepage” was, and I spend everyday on the internet. Somethings will just happen to get by either you didn’t find the headline interesting or you were busy taking a crap when it came out. Does it really matter? No. My point is, you all (the school girls) need to get off your high horses and shut the fuck up. I’m sure you don’t know everything, so why do you expect someone else too?
And if you bitch about my typing/grammar, I couldn’t give a rip.
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
No one forced you to read this article or this post. No one expected you to know anything about it. And no, this isn’t CNN or the BBC, it’s a filter site. If you don’t understand the headline, then you probably won’t understand or care much about the story. If it looks interesting, try some of that high level intelligence and do some research instead of breaking out the holier than thou attitude.
Re: Million Dollar Home Page
I am a very busy and prominent person, and really have much bigger and pressing things to worry about than matters such asthese.
No, you only think you are ‘busy and prominent’.
If you were TRULY ‘busy’ and actually ‘prominent’, you would have had one of your paid staff (or unpaid student flunky) figure out what the ‘million dollar homepage’ was, and brief you.
Instead, you are here. Whining.
Go be ‘pressing things’ elsewhere.
Matt
…don’t be that guy.
Vocabulary and/or grammar doesn’t necessarily signify a position in society or the business world.
If that was the case, I’d own a Bentley.
This is NOT about utilizing what you learned in AP English classes. It’s a place for people to discuss articles that Techdirt posts (which are generally summaries of articles posted elsewhere).
It is the equivalent of sitting around and bullsh*tting with your friends. If you worry about your vocabulary and grammar when your just shooting the sh*t with your friends, well then…there is no hope for you.
No Subject Given
Ack, yes he should have linked the ‘Million Dollar Homepage’ to at least a news source or a previous post on techdirt … but it’s not THAT big of a deal now is it …?
refreshing twist
i came across this site, its a refreshing twist to the billion dollar quest and its hillarious too. think of truman show for a toy cymbal monkey. the my billion dollar homepage.
http://www.mybilliondollarhomepage.com
Indirect value for advertisers
I believe that Alex’s site still generates some indirect value for advertisers at least by improving their visibility in search engines. It has a PageRank of 7 and many still continue to add links to it (by the way, this article has just added one link). So, getting the link from website with such a high PageRank for as low as 1$ it is clearly a reasonable investment.
Good luck to all the copycats 🙂
http://www.milliondollarhosting.net
Russian girl sells her body on internet....
Russian girl sells her body on internet….
She is russian and she is trying to sell her part of the body in a shape of pixels on her web page….
ISellBody.com
thought it is interesting….