The Next Big Thing

Whenever you look at the success stories floating around the internet now it seems to be small independent entrepreneurs who are at the centre of things.

When Andrew Black and Edward Wray first developed Betfair back in 1999 they were just two ordinary guys who had come up with a brilliant idea.

But you have to ask yourself why companies like Ladbrokes and William Hill didn't get their first?

It's all to do with a lack of innovation and inspiration that is generally found within large organisations who have rigid core beliefs.

Take Youtube as another example, an idea so simple it seems impossible that none of the so called internet pioneers thought of it first. So what do they do?

Well in the case of Youtube, Google initially tried to copy them with Google Video but eventually bought the company for $1.65bn which they could have saved by using their heads.

Of course sometimes, the big players can actually make a success of copying an idea simply by having more funding for a project. The Answer Bank was created many years before Yahoo Answers and yet it is the latter which is proving the more popular just because Yahoo had the funds available to market their site to a greater extent.

But this raises a big issue for those people who have a unique concept they wish to promote. Is my site going to survive against stiff competition from larger companies?

Well it's a risk one will have to take in order to find out. You may get lucky and find yourself at the centre of a lucrative takeover or you may find yourself being pushed out of the market.

The key is creating a hype around your product. Viral marketing can help you do this but I think a strong brand is also very important.

I say take a chance. If your idea is that creative and unique then it should take off. If not at least you wont regret the fact that you didn't try.

It doesn't sound much, but a link can be so valuable to a webmaster who is struggling to drive enough traffic to his/her site. It can boost SERPs, increase PR and get your brand name in front of thousands of eyes.

The Million Dollar Homepage was the first to take advantage of this fact but many sites have tried to add their own unique twist but none seem to have had quite the same impact.

Take 500 words for instance. It received huge volumes of traffic and undoubtedly the links on that site were followed by thousands of people. But the problem as far as I see is that it is a static idea in terms of it has finished and really can't grow any more.

So someone thought of yet another twist to this concept with Link Experiment whereby anyone can get a link on the page at any time just by paying more than those already there. It is run by an athlete hoping to fund his Olympic dream and has so far raised over $11,000 which is not bad.

Finally we have mmmzr which has gone even further by allowing webmasters to get their link on this high traffic site and make money at the same time. Without going into too much detail it enables webmasters to double their money as more and more people join up.
I have however noticed that it seems to have reached its peak as no new links have been bought recently (the minimum you have to pay now is $4096!)

All this tells me that for now the link craze may have peaked.

So what's next?

This concept is well known and since its lauch literally thousands of copycat websites have been made. But you have to admire the way Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from the UK went about it.

The idea is so simple and this is number one on my list of things a great internet craze has to be. It's no use making a complicated site that only 1% of users can navigate and understand.

Another thing I like about it is that the appeal for advertisers was so far ranging. Almost any webmaster would have liked a link on such a high traffic site and you could have bought into this for just $100.

Again, this is genius!

So Alex Tew has launched the follow-up to the site that spawned a million copycats.

His new site Pixelotto is actually very similar to the MDHP in that it is again selling 1 million pixels.

This time however the pixels cost $2 each.

The twist is that he is now giving a member of the internet community the chance to become a millionaire themselves by giving away half of the money made.

All you have to do is sign up and then click on the ads on his site. The more you click the more entries you get.

It was always clear this was going to be an equally big success for him as he himself has a news buzz around him. BBC news featured his story on Monday and many other big news sites have picked up on it along with thousands of blogs across the web.

What does this prove? Get cult status and you'll likely to be able to create new and popular websites at will. Webmasters will flock to traffic and this site will get a whole heap of that.