Young millionaire: Alex Tew

Video: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1203405n%3fsource=search_video

                                        

Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from Cricklade in Wiltshire, England, conceived The Million Dollar Homepage in August 2005.  He was about to begin a three-year Business Management course at the University of Nottingham, and was concerned that he would be left with a student loan that could take years to repay.  As a money-raising idea, Tew decided to sell a million pixels on a website for $1 each; purchasers would add their own image, logo or advertisement, and have the option of including a hyperlink to their website. Pixels were sold for US dollars rather than UK pounds; the US has a larger online population than the UK, and Tew believed more people would relate to the concept if the pixels were sold in US currency. In 2005, the pound was strong against the dollar: £1 was worth approximately $1.80, and that cost per pixel may have been too expensive for many potential buyers. Tew’s setup costs were €50, which paid for the registration of the domain name and a basic web-hosting package. The website, hosted by Sitelutions, went live on 26 August 2005.

The homepage featured a Web banner with the site’s name and a pixel counter displaying the number of pixels sold, a navigation bar containing nine small links to the site’s internal web pages, and an empty square grid of 1,000,000 pixels divided into 10,000 100-pixel blocks. Tew promised customers that the site would remain online for five years – that is, until at least 26 August 2010.

More article: http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/profile-alex-tew-founder-of-millondollarhomepagecom.aspx

2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8c31b4e8-a3a7-11da-83cc-0000779e2340.html

Luck and other lies

Some people simply live their life by the luck of the draw. They wait for what life has in store for them. They are always in react mode and are consistently under the control of others. They play the lottery everyday, hoping for the big win that always seems to evade them. They roam from situation to situation lacking any sense of adventure. These people go to work everyday, do the same things, run the same routine day after day, week after week and year after year, afraid to step out of their comfort zone.

The good news is this: There is no such thing as luck. I once saw a definition of the word “luck” that stuck with me. I believe it to be a wonderful statement, an accurate description and one that teaches a great lesson simultaneously. Luck is simply “the point where preparedness meets opportunity!”

Wow! Preparedness and opportunity, what concepts! Opportunities are always presenting themselves, whether we are aware of them or not. They come in waves, like ocean waves, gently washing the shore. Many people have made millions of dollars by simply being aware of the right opportunities and then taking immediate action. They are prepared to act in advance, knowing what to look for as the right opportunity presents itself.

How do we prepare ourselves for opportunity? First is a mandatory change of mindset. We must be ready to step out in faith and expand our comfort zone. Unless we do, we will never position ourselves to walk on the shore as those incredible waves wash over our feet. We must be in the right place at the right time. Is it by coincidence that we arrive at that point? No! We must pro-actively prepare ourselves and get positioned in front of the wave by conscious choice. Stretching our limits and growing out of our current comfort zone are the means of achieving this.

We must have dreams. We must establish goals and write them down, reviewing them daily and fixing them in our minds-eye. We must also believe that we deserve opportunity and that we can and will achieve our dreams. Be confident in this.

Learn everything you can concerning the area of growth that you are interested in. Learning will profit you in ways you cannot possibly imagine at this point. Study every nuance of your interest so that you confidently become an expert in that area. Research companies, associations and groups that are active in your areas of interest. Discover what makes them successful. Learn of their failures. Learn from their mistakes so that you do not duplicate them. Study trends in the marketplace, looking for signs of opportunity in this field. Fine-tune your opportunity awareness channel.

In taking these actions and adjusting your mindset, you are now properly prepared to act when the right opportunity wave confronts you. Others will never see it coming and will be unaware that the wave ever came in, but you will be found actively riding that wave to your success.

Luck is a lie. Luck is blind chance. Luck is that point at which your planned preparedness intersects with the incredible opportunity you have been watching for and patiently waiting to confront you. Your confident action assures your growth and success.

source material: http://ezinearticles.com/?luck-%20and-other-lie&id=96093