Web Ramblings

A while ago I saw somebody posting on twitter about how they couldn’t understand why people insist on re hashing the ‘Million Dollar Pixel’ script format. As I was working on a site that used a very similar idea at the time, I thought this was an interesting question.

Is there room for any more variations on the ‘Million Dollar Pixel’ website idea?

Nearly everybody has seen a version of the ‘Million Dollar Pixel’ script on the internet somewhere by now but if you haven’t here’s a bit of info…

The original site was created by Alex Tew, a student from Wiltshire, back in 2005 to raise funds for his university fees. The basic idea was to sell pixels on his site for $1 dollar per pixel. The pixels were sold in blocks of 10 x 10 with the minimum purchase being $100. The target was to raise (you guessed it) $1 million. With each purchase the buyers were able to upload a small picture, provide a link through to their own site and a tagline to be displayed when their picture was hovered over.

Needless to say the site raised the desired amount and can still be viewed here. Also, because of its success, many copy cat sites have popped up over the years. All of which have had varying degrees of success. Arguably, the success of the first site relied on the novelty factor, and therefore each copy cat has less success because it’s no longer novel.

Considering I have now finished the site I was working on and its likely to be featured in the national press in the next couple of months, my answer is definitely yes, the ‘Million Dollar Pixel’ script can be reinvented. However, I should add that the concept still needs to be original. The ‘ooh, isn’t that a clever idea‘ is lost now so, if you are going to rehash this format there needs to be something special about it to make people want to buy those pixels.

The site I built is for Jakarna Wildlife Trust. They bought a large area of land in Kenya and a map of that area is used for the background. People can select the blocks that they would like to sponsor and all of the money raised is used to rejuvenate the land and protect the wildlife within.

Although the basic premise is the same, on this occasion this is where the similarities end. The Wildlife Trust had vastly different needs from what Alex Tew needed when he created the original site, and therefore the functionality of the map and the way it links into the rest of the website is completely different. The most noticable difference being the minimum purchase is £10 not $100.  Which meant it needed to be built from scratch rather than using one of the many open source solutions that are available. (If you would like to sponsor some land you can do so here www.jakarna.com).

Personally, I believe this is an example of where reinventing the ‘Million Dollar Pixel’ script works extremely well. However, I have seen many sites that get it very wrong.

So what do you think? Is there another style of project that this would work for or do you believe that the ‘Million Dollar Pixel’ script should be left to Rest in Peace?