Creativity and Making Money Online

Often times the ability to see things from different perspectives and to come up with creative and innovative ideas is the real virtue, and if there is one place where creativity can fruit you real money this place is the Internet.

Most of you are probably aware of Alex Tew, the English guy behind the Million Dollar Homepage. He basically wanted to cover the costs of his studies, so he created a website with one million pixels, and started selling advertising space, one pixel for one dollar. After a couple of months he had raised a total of $1,037,100 dollars. Not too shabby, right?

Recently I came across a similar creative (to say the least) idea. Andrew Fischer, a 22-year old web designer, create a site called “King of the Bill”. The site contains a list of links and one banner at the top. At any given time the banner spot is occupied by the highest bid, and as soon as someone else places a higher bid the advertiser that was on the banner is lowered to the first position among the links. Currently you would need to spend $104 to take the banner position, and Andrew has raised close to $5,000 so far.

It might not sound like big money, but do not underestimate the imagination of that guy. Early in 2005, in fact, he managed to raise almost $40,000 by selling advertising space on his forehead. That is right, he placed an auction on eBay and a company called SnoreStop agreed to pay him that amount of money to stamp the company logo on his forehead for one month.

Do you know any other creative (weird?) ways to make money online?

Daniel Scocco on April 2, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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22 Responses to “Creativity and Making Money Online”

Bill A. on April 2nd, 2007 5:23 pm

When my son had to get braces, he got quite a few people to sponsor him to get pink rubber bands for 3 months. He didn’t do it online, but I suppose he could have. This might only apply to younger folks, but maybe it will spark an idea for someone else.
SDtektiv on April 2nd, 2007 6:17 pm

I’m laughing about that ad space on his forehead.
Sean on April 2nd, 2007 7:28 pm

Damn, I wish I could come up with some great ideas like those. I need money!

Great article by the way! I’d never heard of the forehead advertisement thing before, that’s awesome lol.
Gadis on April 2nd, 2007 7:34 pm

That was great idea..
Mike Panic on April 2nd, 2007 7:57 pm

The King of the Bill site is actually rather old now, there are a lot of those sites floating around, along with a lot of $1 sites. By $1 sites I mean a site full of nothing but text ads, for one dollar you get the word of your choice (if it’s not already taken) and get to link to your site. All links appear on the same page will be there for however long the owner has the site, most are saying 5+ years. Most of the sites I’ve seen have well over 200 links already.
jack on April 2nd, 2007 8:14 pm

i think, i’m gonna sell my forehead for ads too. lol
Harajuku Girl on April 2nd, 2007 8:59 pm

nice idea, thx 4 sharing.
D. Psyko on April 3rd, 2007 1:23 am

what about the http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

This guy sold pixels for 1 dollar each
Daniel on April 3rd, 2007 1:46 am

Psyko, yeah I mentioned the Million Dollar Homepage :). That is by far the most sucessful venture of this kind for the past years.

I once heard an story about a guy that created a website to tell the story of his little rabbit. As the rabbit was growing the site gathered quite an audience of people the loved to see what he was eating and stuff like that.

After a couple of months the guy declared on the site that he needed $10,000 or he would kill the rabbit and eat it! People could make donations to stop him from eating the habbit hehe. I never saw this site though, I think it was Italian.
Garry on April 3rd, 2007 1:50 am

Don’t forget that not only do you have to come up with the idea, but you have to tell people about it. The milliondollarhomepage worked so well because he got a lot of publicity including big newspapers and tv shows.
Amos Tebear on April 3rd, 2007 4:30 am

The rabbit site was savetoby.com, and had a parody set up for killtoby.com - the latter of which is no longer active. It’s doubtful the owner received $17,000 of the reported $50,000 that he was aiming for.

Amos
Amos Tebear on April 3rd, 2007 4:32 am

Oh, and I meant to say - one of my all time web favorites is http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/ where a paper clip was swapped for a house. Love it.

Amos
Daniel on April 3rd, 2007 5:29 am

Haha that is a nice one Amos, I did not know about it thanks for sharing!
Roberto Alamos on April 3rd, 2007 6:08 am

I don’t know if this example qualifies, but goldenpalace.com is known to be a buyer of weird things, for example an image of virgin mary on a grilled cheese sandwich (it was bought by $28,000 USD):

http://www.goldenpalaceevents......lledmary01
Ashish Mohta on April 3rd, 2007 6:49 am

Sounds like wohoooo that man rocks lol.Sometimes I wil get a new idea too and then I will make lots of money lol…just kidding..I got excited with that idea.
Basketer on April 3rd, 2007 11:25 pm

Thats so inspiring and so Aha! kind of stuff. I love the ideas man, so simple, intutive yet so brilliant.
Amos Tebear on April 4th, 2007 10:33 am

Here’s a new one doing the same as King of the Bill - http://dnexperiment.com/

Amos
Daniel on April 4th, 2007 11:14 am

Looks like that site is using the same script, you can buy it actually.
ARLINDO on December 12th, 2007 3:41 am

From the moment I had ABOUT THE MILLION IDEA HOME PAGE, I began to path to richdom.