You may recall that 10 years ago, a man asked the Internet for one million dollars by hosting a giant advertisement board and got it. As ridiculous as that seemed 10 years ago, it is still ridiculous today, but apparently it still works… at least on a smaller scale.

On March 12, 2015, a California-based recent graduation of University of California, Berkley started his own version of the history-making website. This guy, who goes only by the name “Roland,” wants to raise $10,000 to buy an Apple Watch Edition.

tenthousanddollarhomepage

Yes, it is ridiculous that a person would have the audacity to beg for money from strangers just to buy an over-priced watch. Yes, it’s ridiculous that Apple has made a $10,000 watch in the first place.

But, what strikes me to be the most ridiculous of all is that this actually works.

Right now, after just over one week in existence, the page is already 78 percent full. In an email, Roland notes that he sells about 500 – 600 pixels per day. The largest single purchase was for 216 pixels.

Roland also explained his idea for the project to raise money for an Apple Watch Edition.

“When I was watching the live stream of Tim Cook two weeks ago announcing the Apple Watch pricing, my jaw dropped when he said the gold one would start at $10,000. I found it so amazing that I registered the domain for tenthousanddollarhomepage within a minute of Tim Cook making that announcement. I had originally just thought of it as a funny domain to have and had no idea it would take off so quickly!”

Although slightly updated for the technological visual aesthetic of 2015, this grid looks uncomfortably similar to the milliondollarhomepage of a decade ago, with square after square of brightly colored banners and tiny icons. This time around, quite a few people have simply purchased advertisement space for their Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn profile page.

I guess the social network advertising trend has to do with the fact that there is no minimum purchase. Unlike milliondollarhomepage, you can purchase one pixel for one dollar. You don’t have to buy $100 blocks. So, if you just want to attract more followers on Instagram, you could buy advertising for your feed for a buck.

Some big named tech sites have advertising on tenthousanddollarhomepage, including The Verge, MacWorld, Gizmodo, and more… although it’s not clear if the ads were actually paid for by those websites since there’s no confirmation process when purchasing the space.

All you have to do is upload an image and include a link to a website. So anyone could purchase space for, say, CNN, without the news organization agreeing to it.

Just like milliondollarhomepage, this smorgasbord of advertisement will serve as a snapshot of the history of the Internet. Roland says the site will remain live for at least 10 years.

In 2014, the Guardian reported that while milliondollarhomepage is still live, 22 percent of websites it linked to were dead. If history repeats itself, (and it probably will), many of the links on tenthousanddollarhomepage could be dead in a decade as well.

But, at least one guy will get an Apple Watch Edition out of the experiment. I highly doubt his luxury tech gadget will last as long as his website will.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

3 replies on “Want a $10,000 Apple Watch Edition? Ask the internet to pay for it”

  1. These only ever work because of all the free advertising they get given, not because it was a good idea – as pointed out, there are countless other ideas that will completely fail. Indeed, there have been countless variations on this same theme of advertising that have failed. Only difference here is apple also getting free advertising for their ridiculous watch.

  2. Yeah, but remember, for every one of these pages, there are thousands that never make anything. Going viral is the holy grail, whether it’s a YouTube video, a web page, or a crappy flappy video game, and you can make a lot of money if it happens to you, but it’s a complete crap shoot. Some people spend years trying to do it, and advertising companies fantasize about it happening to them, but it won’t, most of the time.

    The next ten thousand $10,000 pages probably won’t make more than a few bucks between them.

Comments are closed.