In 1999, if someone were to tell you that you could make a million dollars by buying a $20 domain, throwing up some forum posts, and selling ads on your site, well you would have laughed in their face. However, there are 13 examples of people who became millionaires doing exactly that. The idea of the million dollar web page is the core example of how business marketing has changed in the last 16 years. No matter what the field is, people want to see grand gestures, big picture ideas, and personality behind companies and their marketing. In this post, we are going to dissect 3 different cultural movements behind the Million Dollar Web sites and we are going to show you how you can tap into that for your own marketing today.

1. Million Dollar Homepage taps into the dot com mentality.

In 2005, one man made over a million dollars by listing his entire website for sale. Everyone from news companies, to internet marketers, to the traditional marketing gurus had their world blown up by this extravagant gesture.

Over the course of 3 months, a site that had no traffic jumped to the top 150 ever made. The chart shows the exact unprecedented clime in traffic. The chart shows the exponential ability of the site to get to it’s million dollar target. When reporting on it during those initial months, the British Broadcasting Company used words like “Unprecedented”,”Extremely Unusual”, and “One of A Kind” to describe the entire idea! People LOVED it. Other sites such as The Register reported that articles about the site were getting successful traction among a wide variety of readers and that the entire idea had broken out from among the stereotypes of the usual web user of the time and rather interested nearly everyone!

What does that mean for us businesses?

We have to learn in our online marketing to reach outside of our normal markets. I know, this is easier said than done and there is no skeleton key to just simply do this. However, maybe we can come up with one idea at a time and we can test them until we find something that works. The truth is that the machine that made the million dollar home page unique is that it was a GRAND GESTURE. See there were plenty of other donation sites at the time. The point of the site was to donate money to a college student, but instead of  playing in to what everyone expected a site like that to be like, he tapped into the web mentality and provided an awesome opportunity to many online businesses.

2. Million Dollar Homepage sees beyond its goals.

The Million Dollar Homepage started as a project to help a poor student pay for college. There were thousands of sites just like it online, yet this is the only one that managed to flourish. Why do you think that is?See the other people on the web who were trying to get donations were focused on the generosity of people, meanwhile the million dollar homepage focused on the marketing desires of businesses.   Here is some quick data about the relative popularity of the two schools of thought:

To say the least, people think about how to market their company much more than people think about paying for college, yet alone what a small amount of people think about helping others pay for their college! The  second revolutionary concept that MDH landed on was that he found that the internet can be used in a flexible manner. As with regular marketing, we can choose to be upfront with our marketing (billboards, signs, radio, newspaper) or we can choose to be indirect in our marketing (big city business offices, flying private jets, sport sponsorships). Online marketing offers thousands of more options. MDH made it clear that while the purpose of the website was to generate donations, the way they would go about it would be much more profitable to both the involved businesses and themselves.

What does that mean for us?

We need to make decisions in our marketing the benefit BOTH our customers and OURSELVES! The success of your business is indeed dependent on the effectiveness of your marketing. The ROI for most web marketing is 150% in the ideal situation. The ROI for the Million Dollar Homepage was 1000X that number. That 60$ site made over a million dollars. Now that is marketing done right. How can we bring that to our own business endeavors?

Here at GiveJet, we believe that making a presence online is all about making a positive impact and providing you with beneficial information. This is also how we build our business strategy. When our strategists look at the core concepts behind the amazing piece of internet history that was the million dollar homepage, we get excited. Our excitement is because we see real potential for the power of creative solutions to inane problems. A college student who needed money used the internet to find a way to fix that problem. Honestly, that is probably what brought you here. You most likely found out about GiveJet because you looked to the internet to solve your travel problem. Well, you have found the most creative travel option in the world. Read about how Private Jet Charter can change the way you conduct business, travel, and view the world.

That is all for now! Check in later for more posts about jet charter!

Michael Y.

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