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| Founder of the Million Dollar
Homepage Should Send a Royalty Check To Digg.com and Its
Members |
| Posted: 14-01-2006 | Views: 525 |
| Author: Steve Blom |
The phenomena of Alex Tew and
the pixel site, Milliondollarhomepage.com, could be attributed
in large part to what many call “The Digg Effect.” If
you are heavily involved in the tech world, you probably
know what that means. If not, here is a brief primer.
Digg.com is a new media site where the members post and
vote on unique stories that they find on the Internet.
The site itself is about a year old but already has close
to 100,000 members, and it is visited by over a million
people each day to get their daily dose of unique news.
The Digg Effect occurs when a particular story gains enough
votes (members deem the story as newsworthy through voting)
and is promoted to the homepage. When this happens, look
out. If an article moves up to the Digg homepage, it can
cause tens of thousands of visitors to arrive at the Web
site where the original article or news account was posted.
The Digg Effect has been known to crash Web sites within
hours of story being posted on Digg.
Now, how does this apply to Alex Tew, and the Milliondollarhomepage.com?
Tew created an odd looking site that sold pixels, which
are about the size of a period, for a dollar a piece.
His goal was to raise enough money to pay for college.
After selling a small number of pixels to friends and
some companies he knew, Alex paid for a press release
to be distributed. Lucky for Alex, a Digger (a term used
for a Digg.com member) posted the press release on Digg.com.
Within hours the story was promoted on the homepage of
Digg.com, and Tew’s site was flooded by an estimated 40,000
visitors during the ensuing hours.
If this was the end of the story, Alex probably would
not have sold all one million pixels in less than five
months. This story then took a twist that sealed Tew’s
fate and paved the way for his ultimate success.
Here’s how it happens. If a Web site is relatively new,
like Alex Tew’s site was, The Digg Effect can have far
reaching results because of the policies of another site
owned by Amazon.com called Alexa. Currently, there are
over 10 million people who have downloaded the Alexa tool
bar which assists the site in ranking Web sites across
the globe in terms of Web site traffic. The Alexa homepage
also has a section within it aptly called “Movers and
Shakers” which catalogs the five Web sites that have the
most traffic growth worldwide.
When Milliondollarhomepage.com was deluged with tens of
thousands of visitors from Digg.com, during the second
week of September 2005, the site flew up the Alexa rankings
and subsequently reached the “Movers and Shakers” section
on Alexa’s homepage. This exposed the Milliondollarhomepage.com
to literally millions of eyeballs who visit Alexa each
day.
A careful analysis was done to determine “who” the advertisers
were who initially bought pixels from Tew’s site. The
answer was quite revelatory. Many of the advertisers were
tech related companies, who matched the profile of many
Digg.com and Alexa members. Many of the initial advertisers
were also bloggers who also match the demographics of
Digg.com and Alexa.
Once Tew’s site reached $50,000 to $60,000 in sales, just
after the The Digg Effect took place, the mainstream media
published the story and took care of the rest of Milliondollarhomepages’s
free advertising needs. As is the case with many unique
stories, follow up articles were quickly published.
Just as writers should include attribution for the work
of other writers in their own published works if included
in a given piece, it would be nice if Alex Tew were to
at least acknowledge the contribution of the Digg members
who set off the series of events that have enriched him.
Try as we might, we never found any discussion of The
Digg Effect nor the roll Alexa played in the success of
Tew’s site in any article or news show where Tew was interviewed.
The place that luck and timing takes in the success of
certain businesses and people’s lives cannot be underestimated.
Did Alex develop his strategy knowing that some Digger
would post his press release on this democratic media
site? Did he envision what would happen with Alexa soon
thereafter? If he did, then we can truly call Tew’s accomplishment
a work of genius. If not, maybe he should take a moment
and say thanks to the world of Digg.com. Perhaps he isn’t
even aware of the events described above, and how they
shaped his life. Maybe some enterprising reporter should
ask.
Drew Graef
Contributing Writer
Press Direct International
About The Author:
www.pressdiretinternational.org
This article is free for republishing
Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/ |
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