Remember the Million Dollar Homepage that sold 1m pixels at a price of $1 each? The site was setup by a student to finance his university education and as he was the first to do something like it he was very successful and ended up auctioning the last pixels on eBay. He also got blackmailed by some Russians down the track. You’ll find all the details at Wikipedia.

However I always wonder how many clicks these mini ads generate but unfortunately couldn’t find any useful info on that matter.

Now here’s a guy with the same goal but a different approach. One Year For Sale sells you minutes ($1 each) and you get to display your message on the homepage for the time you purchased. I don’t quite understand the thinking. Why would someone buy minutes independent of any site traffic and demographics when you can do efficient search engine marketing and only pay for actual click-throughs. To me there is not enough value for neither advertiser nor user. But then maybe I’m wrong and he’s really gonna make the $500k.