Bitcoin Forum

Advertise, win Bitcoin and donate to charity... at the same time!

https://the-million-bitcoin-homepage.com/

In 2006 business student Alex Tew launched The Million Dollar Homepage, a website offering a finite supply of advertising space and the chance to become a part of internet history. The website gained much media attention and all 10,000 boxes were sold out in 5 months.

Since then Bitcoin has entered the world stage and so we decided to revamp the original concept, incorporating the new digital currency along with some exciting additional features.

• We've hidden "Gold Blocks" in the grid which may be won if you buy a block which overlaps them. Every time a block is purchased we split the takings and divert funds back on to the grid.
• We maintain a pot of Bitcoin which is sent to a random charity once our reserve exceeds 1 BTC. To see a history of previous charity payouts – please check the about panel link.
• Desposits in bitcoin are processed instantly so you can get straight to uploading your content.

Be a part of Bitcoin history and, most importantly, have fun on the grid!

Additionally, please post any bug reports or complaints here and I'll address them asap.

I'm not saying your idea is horrible, just wondering if you think you were the first?

http://bitcoinposter.com
+others

No don't think I was the first at all, just wanted to make one that is a lost more special than the existing ones out there.

Also used it as a chance to implement my own bitcoin payment processing system, and generally push my skills in several areas.

It is certainly much nicer than bitcoinposter.com. Good job with it.

Thanks mate, I sunk all the OCD I could into it. I really appreciate your feedback, it means a lot even if the thing fails just to have validation from people in the community, especially other developers/programmers.

The value of being able to see, in real-time, when people are clicking and visiting (The page of) your blocks is tangible I'd say.

Unsure if pricing has been set right, but we'll see. I think the price/(area*time) value is ok for now, we'll see.

I'm also open to bids, if anyone wishes to purchase the website as it exists.

I'm about to start new employment in a few months and foresee promotion being quite time consuming.

Would be happy to continue development (at a cost) and provide technical support as necessary.

Any takers?

I'd be interested, but I'd rather see a price first, before bidding.

Did bitpay, etc really pay for those current ads, or did you just place them there yourself to make the site look a bit more used?

Okay,

They're there as demonstrations, you can see they got clickthroughs for the time they were there. And will be going down within the next 24 hours, leaving only the two genuine purchases made so far.

My promotion has been sloppy and also there has been no media coverage so far. The "gold blocks" concept is there to drive usage, and since I have not enough BTC to preload these blocks I think that's another factor which has discouraged people. I'm waiting for some larger purchases, then the code will take the reserve balance for gold blocks and split them out into many 16x16px blocks which will be redeemable when hit.

The conversion rate to signing in is currently terrible, and I imaging the BTC-only payment system is another barrier.

With coinbase integration, I would sell the thing for about 50BTC. I've put 9 months solid work and learning into it, and so far the site has proven to be secure/reliable. Everything (mission critical) has been meticulously tested.

PM me if you'd like to discuss any trade/partnership further. Perhaps working together we'd make something better of it, who knows.

-Fly

Thanks for letting me know, but at that price I don't even think I can counter-offer.

I hope the 9 months you put in ends up being worth it for you.

If I did buy it, I was thinking to firstly put it on some shorter, catchier domain name.

It was not 9 months solid/continuous, there *were* breaks, but I value the work at that.

If you want I'd be happy to discuss hosting a re-branded version at a domain of your choice, name your price.

This idea has been thought of / implemented so many times. Good luck with yet another reboot.

If you are going to criticise me here then do so constructively, or stay silent. You would be better spending your time working on presenting a more mature attitude, than wasting time with useless forum comments that do nothing for yourself, or the community at large.

I honestly expected better from the Bitcoin community, but it is full of people like you. That is very depressing, and I'm hoping that you and others like you are a poor representative.

It's a reboot, yes, but far better than any others out there. The idea of charity and prizes was to reflect Bitcoin's ethos, none of the other bullshit pixel advertising sites did this. It is also a live/real-time site, if it was ever used a lot people would see blocks appear instantly and also are notified (via icons) which blocks are receiving clicks/visits.

As a tool for marketing your business it could be very useful, provided I get the media exposure necessary to get traffic. It currently gets only 200 visits per day, and so far only 20 of those have actually signed in to take a look.

I also have stated many times prior that this project was to push my skills and knowledge, anything else is a bonus. The entire thing was built and launched by myself, I doubt you have worked this hard for a single day in your life.

It is a statement, a troll of sorts, and you just got caught out xxx

Do you know what a differential equation is? Or how to solve one? I did so for the map slide (basic friction equation).

How about what a quadtree is, or why they're useful in this context? No didn't think so. I have implemented a fast javascript quadtree for this. The map code makes extensive use of this and doesn't have a single unnecessary <canvas/> element in the dom at one time.

A bitcoin payment processing system, using a custom fork (fredan's ZeroMQ) which I've maintained over the recent months - to provide realtime notification of deposits and when they are confirmed. Of all the bitcoin websites out there, I'd say mine is the nicest from a user's perspective (no refreshing required, all over websocket/socket.io).

Wrote a JavaScript library (to be opensourced)... getImage.js - which provides various methods for image upload: choose file via <input/>, clipboard copypaste, webcam, dragdrop, url...

And more, I'm sure, that I wont waste more time listing.

I did all this in the hope that people would either recognise my skills, or use it to promote their business and Bitcoin itself (because imo it's the only implementation newsworthy as a reboot of Alex Tew's original website). So far I've just had destructive comments and only recognition from programmers who realise the care and effort that went into this.

If this takes off, Sean's Outpost / IndySci and the other charities added would benefit directly. Is that not a good story for Bitcoin??

Yet still people are either too tight with their money to try the thing out (you can for < $1) or just downright destructive that they feel the need to comment without any purpose other than a put-down.

Again, you really show your intellect and maturity in doing so, well done mate... well done.

Dude, take it easy. You are making yourself look like a fool. 2 posts just because of 1 user, that isn't going to help you.

Anyway, let's talk business. First of all the price for your website 50BTC, way to much. You should be happy if someone paid you 1-2BTC for it. It doesn't matter how much work you put into it, it is not worth 50BTC. You might get that much if you get as many visitors as Blockchain.info, but not with 200 visitors a day. Hell, I also get 200 visitors each day on my website but I highly doubt that anyone would buy it for 50BTC.

Why not use one of the standard jQuery libraries and a plugin for the map stuff. Yes, you would have to rewrite some stuff, but it would have been easier then creating something completely new.

Most websites use websockets/socket.io. This isn't something new. Also, why create a whole new system when you could have used the Blockchain.info API? It would have more then sufficed for this website.

There are more then enough Javascript scripts around for this. The only thing you had to do is throw them together.

All I see is a person who spend to much time, doing something that has already been done, using stuff he made that already exists in this form. I hope that you can take this criticism without feeling the need to bash.

---

I, however, would like to add that your website is very smooth and that I like the way you created the map and how it reacts.

And yes, I can take that criticism well because it is fair and you make fair points.

Again, it was about learning and developing skills, so that's why I didn't use off the shelf stuff... I did use jQuery timeago and jcrop, fontawesome and a few other things.

The map itself was custom, so I didn't want to use any other tweening things out there. Plus they don't give you control over friction coefficients in the way I wanted.

Also I think many are still using -walletnotify or -blocknotify, which is ugly. This comes straight from bitcoind over zmq/rabbitmq...

I think if I promote it correctly I can net more than 1BTC, but less than 50BTC

;)

Also its not a case of "just use a plugin", the requirements were very specific and I can't work within the constraints/limitations of any out-the-box map stuff... I wrote this for speed, I know the limitations of browsers and how to overcome them, so did.

If this were to have 10,000 images... it would operate very smoothly still.

https://www.facebook.com/The.Million.Bitcoin.Homepage

and

https://twitter.com/BTCMillions

are up and I've reddit and facebook promotions running.

Even if it fails, I've at least brought about some extra exposure to Bitcoin to the masses, which is what I hoped to do...

You can encourage a whole generation of entrepreneurs off the back of Alex's story, and to do so again in the Bitcoin space is not a bad thing.

Look, those are valid points. Alright, I know see why you did the things you did and they make sense. Just try to stay calm. There a lot of people on Bitcointalk who respond that way.

1 tip, get a better domain. You will get whole lot more visitors if you have an url without "-"'.s ;)

I'm investing no further money into this aside from ads and hosting.

A rebrand is not garaunteed to net any profit, it's full steam ahead. News piece is necessary.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4585026.stm

This would make a good column filler. They can easily write about his calm.com venture and where he went since The Million Dollar Homepage, how his idea still inspires people today.

From that you'd have a bunch of bitcoin businesses benefiting, charities benefiting, everyone benefiting.

My cut is 70%, that leaves 30% going back to users and charity. More noble than Primedice I'd say.

Even getting myself some paid development work would be great, that's why I'm tired of these destructive comments "good luck with that"... it does nothing for the community and is exactly the type of crap holding Bitcoin back (as does the unoriginal Primedice, rehash of Satoshidice, which serves to do nothing more than slowly suck away cash from idiots who use the damn thing).

Please don't take this the wrong way, but in addition to all the above discussion, I am curious why you felt the need to write "Sole creator of" in your signature.

Are you not capable of delegation, or just not interested? And why are you advertising that fact?

As I say, I'm just curious, because it's a wildly different mindset to what I'm used to. Do you think with outsourcing to a small team, you could have done it all in a couple of weeks?

A single pseudonymous entity claims responsibility for Bitcoin and nobody has a problem with that. I am the sole creator of this project and I have every right to display that fact to users here.

This is my creation and if I can pick up work by demonstrating my skills then that's an added bonus. I actively want to code/develop for BTC, instead of working down the more traditional routes.

Correct, a team could have done it in a shorter time but only with adequate oversight, teams have the ability to get unfocused/lost easily. In this case "if you want it done right, do it yourself" applied heavily.

For a single individual I've achieved a lot. Why don't you log in, have a look around, deposit/withdraw (you can scan the withdrawal address using your webcam and mobile device), then maybe try buying a block to advertise your own pixel advertising site (whoa! let's get meta on everyone, why not!?).

Joking aside, you'll get a feel for how thorough I've been if you actually just try it out...

Another sale came in today (https://the-million-bitcoin-homepage.com/block/10) and traffic is double what it was yesterday. Given the price paid and number of clicks/visits on the blocks so far, plus the fact that the audience is going to be Bitcoin oriented, I'd say that's good value for money.

Soon people will realise this and it will gain flight. The price is right.

Early days but it's picking up: https://i.imgur.com/hMbXkwg.png

... To the moon??

:P

Great application of the idea, I'd be interested in buying it but that domain isn't memorable or convenient. If I were you, I'd license the site and sell it.

Thanks,

Yes, the domain stinks. First the dashes are not very nice (was well aware of this but all others were taken), second the name *is* horrible (The intention is to leverage the original million dollar branding).

Wanted this to attract casual users as well as advertisers, and am still hoping it gets use and money is sent to the listed charities (Sean's outpost, IndySci, Bitcoin100).

Again, am open to bids to license the site, I can very easily/quickly spin up new instances of it and switch the branding. Currently the upload code is tied to an s3 bucket (plus cloudfront for CDN), but this could be adapted to another hosting environment.

Currently have

Two reddit self-service ads: http://www.reddit.com/?ad=t3_1xov9d & http://www.reddit.com/?ad=t3_1xljl0
Twitter spampain: https://twitter.com/BTCMillions
Facebook spampain: https://www.facebook.com/The.Million.Bitcoin.Homepage

Open to offers.

Thanks to the kind generosity and support of a Bitcoin angel/donator here at BitcoinTalk I've been able to load the site with 10 BTC in prize funds.

Also have put in a campaign which gives users 10 free squares which they can use in exchange for posting a link on their Facebook or Twitter account.

The gold blocks are 3x3 squares in size and there are currently 200 of them on the grid, each with a value of 0.05 BTC.

1/((200*3*3)/(1024*1024)*10) ~= 1:60 chance of winning per user.

So I'm hoping that this drives some BTC awareness over social media in the coming days/weeks. We'll see.

We've had quite a few signups and free blocks created today.

This is a good chance to get some free advertising!

Good news!

We've updated the site and removed expiry dates from the blocks, now you can get permanent ad space on our site.

https://the-million-bitcoin-homepage.com/

Along with the free blocks promotion that means a totally free way to promote your Bitcoin business.

Cheers!

So how much for the site?

The domain is too long.Please get a shorter version for it.

I have "thebitcoinhomepage.com", is that short enough for you?

Looks like fun.  We will participate =)

Thanks. By claiming the 10 free squares, twice, on both your twitter and facebook you've helped give the site a little exposure. However seems that you had problems when splitting your image over both blocks, which probably is best done by creating the image to size first, splitting it up (the cropping does not do any filtering/subsampling), and probably you'd have had better results by buying the 20-square block in a oner... costing you $5... but never mind.

If you want to amend the image please send me a link to download it (as a PNG for example), 320x64 pixels makes up the 20 squares you currently occupy. I'd be happy to update it for you, for free, of course.