The Pixelotto Experiment

1 Trackbacks to “The Pixelotto Experiment”

1. Trackback from Dan Grossman : Pixelotto Update on May 9th, 2007 at 2:22 am:
   

   […] The Pixelotto Experiment was one of the most popular entries on this blog for several weeks reflecting the hype surrounding the site’s launch. Tew’s million dollar homepage copy made online headlines in December, but never gained the media attention the original site saw. By mid-January, sales of the pixel ads had almost completely stopped, and worse even, existing ads began to disappear. A total of six large blocks that had been purchased are no longer on the Pixelotto grid. […]

20 Responses to “The Pixelotto Experiment”

1. Rik December 16th, 2006

   Well I have to say, this is one of the first intelligent blogpieces I read about Pixelotto. Personally I don’t think Alex is going to make it this time. He had his online publicity, but practically nothing in the traditional media. And you still need that if you want to succeed. In 3 months or so, there won’t be anymore pixels sold. And we all we start to forget about it. Not every nice idea can be repeated. And not even every nice idea is a succes the first time. Look at Steve Jobs, he made the Next Cube (which looked awsome, i thought), years and years ago and nobody wanted it. Back at Apple he tried again, still not really a succes.

2. Art. December 17th, 2006

   I think that he will make it but there will be not much satusfied customers… I have question to author of this article - clicks you have from pixelotto.com - are they just clicks to your home page or visitors went also inside the site? what is host/hits ratio from pixelotto? thank you

3. Dan December 17th, 2006

   @Art: Clearly some of them are going inside the site for there to have been sales made from those clicks, as the screenshot shows. I don’t have a more detailed breakdown than that.

4. Art. December 17th, 2006

   clear. anyway thank you for reply. one more question - do you know something about his ebook? or it was total bulls**t?

5. Ish December 28th, 2006

   Again, i state that Alex could have done so much more with a new site. In my opinion he’s failed to make the mark with pixelotto. Providing visitors an incentive to click the ads was correct, however, making just one person a million dollar winner doesn’t fair well with the general public……. the chances of winning aren’t realistic. One of the copycats hit the mark and that is http://www.pixaprize.com. A long-term, sustainable business concept, with the grid transformed into a treasure hunt grid and prizes hidden behind various squares for visitors to win. If that wasn’t enough, vsitors are given quirky “hot & cold” clues to help them find those prizes. Gets visitors clicking and advertisers are much happier for the traffic. Appeasing both visitors and advertisers is what it’s about and pixaprize hits the mark. Unlucky Alex i say! should’ve copied pixaprize!

6. luv December 28th, 2006

   Well, a website i stumbled across on a forum has worked out more on the concept of pixelotto adding thing they thought were lacking… Over 600 contests… though no ads sold yet… http://www.pixelllite.com

7. Dan December 28th, 2006

   Pixelllite looks too amateurish to me. The design doesn’t nearly fit in a 1024×768 browser window, but if you expand it too big, the header elements overlap and background starts repeating itself. A “pixel site” can’t work without both traffic and looking reputable enough to give money to.

8. luv December 29th, 2006

   it works fine now.

9. John December 29th, 2006

   I found another site, but it’s quite different - it doesn’t sell pixels, but rather letters. http://www.lettermatrix.com

10. Dan December 29th, 2006

    TagsPage, which is ~2 years old, is a much better way to sell text MHD-style than that site: http://tagspage.com/

11. Alex December 29th, 2006

    http://tagspage.com has PageRank 7 which is very important. Thx for the tip Dan! I just bought a tag on TP

12. Dan December 29th, 2006

    It has PR7 but several hundred links on the page. The PageRank is distributed evenly among all of those links. You’d get more benefit buying a link on a normal PR5 page.

13. steve January 7th, 2007

    i agree with you. i like the site and the idea behind it but its just too expensive, unless your a larger company and 200$ or even several thousands are just pocket change. I think sites like this would be better with the advertising cost being cheaper. It will draw more people in then that can afford it. I found a site called http://www.milliondollarnamegame.com where they are charging 5$ to advertise for at least 2 years but they are also doing a multiple money giveaway and are making some world record out of it to draw people back to the website to help the advertisers. Not sure if it would work or not?

14. Dan January 15th, 2007

    Interesting Alexa graph on MDHP/Pixelotto’s traffic: Alexa Link Clearly Pixelotto’s traffic isn’t anywhere near the same magnitude as MDHP, but conveniently for MDHP buyers it revived some traffic in the MDHP site.

15. Phil January 16th, 2007

    Some interesting points there, great post.

16. Michael Blakeley February 13th, 2007

    Well I hear all your companits about pixelotto, and here is a website that answers them. http://www.tickettoamillion.com. Its offering a prize of one million like alex but is giving another million to charity. The best part about it is that it targets a new customer base by banning the advertising of websites which promote gambling, chat lines, pornography etc it aims to bring on board mainstream/ethical companies who appreciate that the a significant portion of the money they pay is going to charity. Its one off so no worry that our advert will be gone in a few months and registrants are not forced to click on links so everyone has an equal chance of winning and people who click on your link will genuinally be intrested in the site. Anyway this is my project, it launched today and allready have had a lot of intrest its just changing this into sales now! But let me know what you think, i reckon i have a chance, just wish I had a nice budget to promote it! Any ideas on free advertising most welcome lol!

17. Gira October 7th, 2007

    well done - good comments - Thank you

18. Berker May 15th, 2008

    Today there are many projects like this

19. Ismail Ougradar June 5th, 2008

    Hello, some call me Ismail. You’ve probably visited my site, a contest to be the last person to find a prize on a page filled with ads. What you don’t know, there are never any winners. I simply get paid by companies whose ads you see to play. Because you sign up for the contest, I now have your email address and sell it to the companies for more money. What do you get in return? You do get something, you’ll never win a prize but you’ll get a mailbox full of spam messages. I’ll get money and because I doubt you’ll change your email address, I can keep reselling it. So thank you for visiting my site, continue to do so. Who knows, maybe someday someone will win. Ismail Ougradar PixaPrize Founder ismail@pixaprize.com