Many of my colleagues were discussing Alex Tew’s million dollar homepage the other day … for the second time. I mention that it is only the second time, as it wasn’t a long discussion, and it has not been a recurring discussion.
My initial reaction to the site was "so what" — not in a sour grapes sort of way (kudos to Alex for making some cash), but more along the lines of "… and this contributes to the future in WHAT way?". It actually reminded me of the "one hit wonders" — those bands that have success with one single, but don’t succeed with album/CD sales … and disappear after a second or third rushed collection of songs. Sure the songs were great at the time, there may even be classics amongst them, but really, does Haysi Fantayzee have another song you can remember?
Anyway, that is not important. The thing is, that Shiny, Shiny and TMDW are the same beast. They flashed alive for a short time, made some money, gave their creators some experience on a world stage, and then became just one of many pop-culture memories. There was no lasting legacy as such, just memories.
If you are interested you can check this site out for a list of one hit wonders. Cool stuff with links directly off to eBay. Makes you wonder whether one day there will be a site that aggregates all the one hit websites that come and go. Perhaps this is the next project for Alex Tew.
S.
You are probbaly right that this is one hit wonder. Especially with all the copycat sites that have sprung up in hopes of repeating the success that Alex had. The only way that some sites might repeat is to take the same idea and apply a different angle to it. That is where I found that a site like Banners Bring Business did at http://www.bannersbringbusiness.com accomplished. It takes the same idea of selling ad space, but using banner ads instead of pixels. I think this has a chance of achieving the same level of success.
I bought the big target in the centre of the MDHP for our Corporate Gifts company, the daily response has been absolutely phenomenal (up to 5000 unique visitors / day). We’re just glad that we got in there early and took the chance with spending quite a lot of money on it. With regards to copycat sites – I’m looking for something with even 10% of the initiative, to no avail.