As with so many things, the ideas that really `work` on the Internet are often the most simple. In fact, they are often the ideas that most people would just discard as being too ridiculous to even try (this doesn`t just apply to the Internet of course - many great inventors/entrepreneurs have been laughed at in the past only to have the last laugh themselves...).

Anyway, I have been following the story of one such idea over the past couple of months and although I am sure many of you will already be familiar with it, I wanted to share some thoughts with you.

The site in question is called the Million Dollar Home Page. This site was the brainchild of an English guy by the name of Alex Tew. Alex is 21 and back in August was about to start university.. Being only too aware of the fact that many students end up finishing their education with huge debts to repay, he decided to try and generate sufficient funds to cover his expenses whilst studying using the power of the Internet.

The basic concept of the Million Dollar Home Page is that website owners can buy advertising space on the home page of the site at a cost of $1 per pixel. The smallest advertising block you can purchase is 10x10 pixels, hence a cost of $100. There are a million pixels available for purchase, thus if Alex succeeds in selling them all, he will have raised a cool $1million!

On the face of it, this is a crazy idea - why would anyone want to pay to put a tiny graphic on a page of thousands of other tiny graphics on the off-chance that someone might click on it? If you had asked me 3 months ago (ie. prior to the site being launched) if I thought it was worth doing, I would have said `no` (as indeed, I think most people would have done). How wrong I was....

Alex launched the site at the end of August and right away started to try and generate press interest. This approach worked superbly and he has had International press coverage over the past couple of months which has helped to spread the word about his si