They say there is a mug born every minute and the internet is clearly no sanctuary for mugs. Irish Actor Stephen Francis Brady recently launched a new website with the intention of giving away £1 Million ($1.8 Million) to someone out there. How very nice and grand of him but it’s not his money!
He has setup a website called “Step up to a Million” or should that be pyramid selling in disguise. However, with room for only 21 people, amazingly the first four spaces have already been sold for more than their asking price on eBay.
Now with only 17 places left Stephen is planning on going viral with “Step up to a Million” and believes that the last remaining places will also get snapped up.
he says “Winning the money is just a bonus, the real goal is to generate huge interest and traffic to the sites of those 21 involved. I then plan to have the draw which will hopefully take place on live TV, which in turn will generate even more interest. Each time a space goes, demand grows for the remaining places and when people see the site I believe they will continue to come back as they will be curious to see who the next place will go to”.
The idea behind his website is to sell 21 banner spaces that start at £1 and double in price each time a space is sold and believe it or not, it only takes 20 double-ups to reach over £1 million.
TV Presenter, Mark Ryes who secured space No.3 for nearly five times the asking price says, “It’s a good Idea and something different that might just work, hopefully it won’t lose momentum half way to the top, but that’s the chance I took.”
Everytime I see sites like this I groan because they are all trying to replicate the success of The Million Dollar Homepage – oh well Caveat Emptor, buyer beware.
Not to be out done, there is also Entrepreneur Island which is a contest and a way for youth to get advertising to back their business idea. Kari Peters started the site so she could raise capital for her business ideas and provide support to other budding business people. She will also use some of the money to buy a real island and turn it into a members-only resort for the 100 lucky Web site members. All this for a sign-up fee of only $50.
The site is based on a simple premise: Entrepreneur Island has 100 spaces available for business barons with $50 and good ideas. Once 100 have joined, the race to use the page for advertising and to raise $2 million capital is on. Half of the money raised by each business person will go toward starting their business and surprise, surprise “Peters will keep half”. Along the way, there are three treasures – two $2,500 and one $5,000.
One will be released when the 100th member joins. One will be awarded in an online poll of Entrepreneur Island visitors. The last is hidden on Cyber I-land and available to the first member of the public who cracks the clues contained in the site’s weekly newsletter.