Titled "The Problems of a 13 year old Entrepreneur", it listed the reasons why a journalist might want to write about the trials and tribulations of Nicky as he sought to create the "next friends-reunited". Nicky has been home educated since his parents took him out of school last year. The press release, written in a very mature style for a 13-year-old, explains: "My school career was haphazard to say the least. I did not get on in school and certainly the system did not fit my requirements. The school wrote me off as a loser." When I spoke with Nicky's parents, they said that he had problems working at school.
The release continued: "Whilst I study normal subjects my interest is in web design/IT and now I'm at an advanced stage there is no funding for tuition.
"Once you are out of the system there is not a penny of government support. As dissatisfaction of the education grows, more children are going to be faced with this financial burden." (I have sympathy for Nicky. I, too, ended up off school for much of my GCSE years, although in my case it was due to a long-term illness.)
Immediately, it became obvious that no 13-year-old, especially not one with education problems, had written the press release. Malcolm John, Nicky's father, with a background in television, confirmed to me that he had written the letter to journalists "based on Nicky's thoughts".
In the release, "Nicky" says: "The investment in the site has been massive and at the moment the response has been pathetic. I stand to cover a huge financial loss if I can't increase public awareness of the site. I have also been inundated by messages from 'nutters', that daily I need to delete". Welcome to the world of e-commerce, Nicky.
Puzzlingly, the press release also claims that the site had more than 200,000 hits in December, which if true is certainly not a "pathetic" response. If true, his site is nearly as popular as my PinkNews.co.uk, which has 250,000 monthly unique users.
However, the Alexa internet statistical rank suggests that while 30 in every million pages viewed on the internet are on my website, less than one in every million are on Nicky's. This suggests that he could have only seen around 8,000 hits.
As I said, Nicky seems like a very nice young man, but seems to be under a lot of pressure to achieve something akin to the success of Alex Tew. However, he says he hadn't heard of MillionDollarHomepage (despite his site being a clone). His father described his first website (where you can send e-mails to Santa) as "a financial disaster, Nicky needs to recoup that investment".
In all honesty, neither Nicky nor Adam will become millionaires like Alex Tew, because their ideas just aren't that original. Alex, having created the first site funded by micro payments for advertising, has cornered the market.
I must admit that I do have a tinge of jealousy for the success that Alex has achieved, although this is tempered by a grin at the huge cheque he's going to have to write to HM Customs and Revenue.
But as a word of advice to others wishing to follow in his footsteps, I don't think that his model has a great deal of merit. As Alex tours the United States promoting his website on chat shows, you need to stop and think: why does he need to do this? The ads are sold, and he need not do anything else. He's guaranteed that the site will be live until 2010, but not that anyone will be accessing it.
After the hype dies down, will anyone actually want to visit the website? It's hardly easy on the eye with the 1,000,000 pixels of clashing colours and garish adverts. It's not a destination site, it's a gimmick.
If for example, you wished to play Su Doku, what would make you think of visiting the MillionDollarHomepage in order to scour round for the Times Online's advert in order to find the online version of the hit game? Much more likely, you'll go on a search engine and search for "Su Doku" and guess what, you'll find the Times Online up there with the other advertisers.
I can't see the site continuing to be one of the highest rated websites in the world, unless Alex diversifies into other advertising models and methods of keeping users hooked. But I'm sure that he has something up his sleeve.
