The Million Dollar Homepage was one “make money online” idea that was original, easy and most important of all – profitable! The idea was pretty simple – create a homepage with one million pixels on it and sell each pixel for just $1. When that page went viral and received huge amounts of publicity, it resulted in every pixel being sold and an easy million dollars for the lucky webmaster!

But that was two years ago. Can it work again?

Ryan Shamus seems to think so and he’s set up Blogging’s Most Wanted in an effort to help you increase exposure for your site and, of course, make himself some money!

The way to be wanted

So you probably want to know how Blogging’s Most Wanted works, right? Ryan has set up a page with 625 individual 40 x 40 pixel squares and each block is available for purchase for just US$15. You can place almost any image that you like in the square that you purchase and have it link to a web site of your choice.

Hence, you’re effectively purchasing an advertising block for your site with the hope that people who visit Blogging’s Most Wanted will click through to your own site.

You can choose any available block that you like and payment can be made easily through Paypal. As some have done, you can also buy multiple blocks and combine them to create a larger piece of advertising for your site.

At the time of writing this post, 43 (6%) of the blocks have been sold which means that there is still quite a bit of prime real estate still left on the site. If all the blocks sell, Ryan will have pocketed $9375 – a nice bit of pocket change!

Will it work for you?

Taking the view that you’ll essentially be buying advertising for your site, the question then turns to whether it represents a worthwhile investment. That can only really be answered by considering the potential success of Blogging’s Most Wanted as if nobody visits Blogging’s Most Wanted - nobody will ever click through to your site!

Looking through Ryan Shamus’ blog and a few other sites around the internet, it’s pretty clear that Ryan is promoting the hell out of it in an effort to encourage viral success. As he admits, he’s yet to have a really big push for the site, but he’s definitely been trying to get one.

His work appears to have paid off as the one week Alexa ranking for the site is already hovering around 50,000. Not bad for a new site, but I’m guessing that a lot of the traffic has so far come via a few purchased reviews. Regardless, traffic is still traffic and no matter how it is achieved, there will undoubtedly be a flow-on to sites listed on Blogging’s Most Wanted.

Seeing the site being promoted is a good sign that you’ll get value for your money.

Crunching numbers

One thing that I really like about Blogging’s Most Wanted is that you can view how much traffic has been sent to sites that are on the homepage.

So far, the most clicks received for a block has been 221 and all of the Top 10 have received over one hundred clicks.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the site for a few days and noticed that one block was purchased about 7 days ago and has so far received 115 clicks. That works out to 13 cents per click which is pretty good value for targeted traffic. However, I’d say that Blogging’s Most Wanted is providing more “random” traffic rather than targeted.

Having said that, that 13 cents per click average is after only one week. As time goes on, I can see it quickly lowering to around the 5 cents per click area which is the price that you want to be looking at for this sort of traffic.

You’d only need 300 clicks to average 5 cents per click and with the extensive promotion surrounding Blogging’s Most Wanted, I don’t think that will be too hard to achieve.

Most wanted improvements

The site has a couple of known bugs that really affect the site’s usage. For example, there is a text overrun on the image descriptions that can make it quite hard to read the writing:

It may seen like a small issue, but when you’re paying to promote your site, you really want to make sure that you’re getting maximum value for your dollar. If people can’t read your description, they may be less inclined to visit your site and the point of the block is wasted.

More importantly - crappy looking sites are less likely to go viral -  so it’s a bug that needs to be fixed immediately and should be at the top of Ryan’s list.

The FAQ section is also incredibly short and doesn’t really do much to tell me about the site or answer any of my questions. Perhaps the most crucial thing lacking here is the answer to “Why should I buy a block?”. To be honest, if I didn’t already know about The Million Dollar Homepage, I’d be a little unsure as to why I should part with my money to purchase a block – the site doesn’t tell me at all.

To improve, the benefits of purchasing a block should be explained clearly and obviously on the homepage. I’d even consider making it part of the header so visitors know right away what they get for their money and how it benefits them.

Should you buy one?

I’m going to recommend buying a block on Blogging’s Most Wanted based purely on the amount of work that Ryan is doing to promote the site. He’s not just sitting around and waiting for success, but investing time and money to grow the site which will definitely result in increased traffic.

However, I’m going to put a small disclaimer to my recommendation and say that you shouldn’t buy one just yet. The site has really only just started and I daresay that a lot of the current blocks have been bought due to the initial buzz and paid promotions. I’d wait a week or two and if you still see blocks continually being bought, jump in and get a good one. Waiting won’t hurt too much as there are still a lot of prime blocks left!

When you buy one, you’ll also be in with a chance to get the $1750 that’s being given away. But you’ll have to wait until all the blocks are sold before you get your hands on it so I wouldn’t make any plans for the money just yet!

A hot tip for the most wanted

If you do decide to buy one, think hard about the image that you’re going to display!

Remember that there may eventually be hundreds of other blocks on the page and that you’re going to need an image that will stand out and give a reason for the visitor to click your image. Personally, I find profile photographs to be a little lame – create a bit of mystery and excitement with your image and I’m sure you’ll get more traffic bang for your buck!

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