The Million Dollar Homepage: what happened and what it teaches
October 22, 2026 · 5 min read · by Furvexo LLC
In 2005, a student in England put a web page online that was nothing but a grid of one million pixels, and sold them. It is one of the simplest and most copied ideas in internet history.
What he did
Alex Tew created a page of 1,000 by 1,000 pixels and sold them at one dollar each, in blocks of 10×10 pixels. Buyers placed a small image and a link in their block. It was a page with one idea, one price and a number everyone could understand.
How it ended
The last 1,000 pixels were sold at auction on eBay in January 2006. The winning bid was $38,100. The whole project brought in about $1,037,100.
Why it worked
- A promise anyone could repeat in one sentence.
- Scarcity that was easy to see: the empty part of the grid shrank in public.
- Press attention, which brought more buyers, which brought more press.
- A price low enough that small businesses could say yes on impulse.
What copycats got wrong
Many imitators followed. Most failed to match the original because the original was news, and a copy is not. Others sold pixels with no clear audience or reason to visit. Over time, many links on the original page have also stopped working, which is a reminder that a placement is only as good as the sites it points to.
What we took from it
Keep it simple, make scarcity honest, and be clear about what a buyer gets. That is why ClaimPixels has stepped pricing that rises as the wall fills, human review so the wall stays clean, and plain language about what we do not promise.