Steal Million Dollar Homepage Pixels(pixelpirate.club)
pixelpirate.club
Steal Million Dollar Homepage Pixels
https://pixelpirate.club/
85 comments
Yeah... gotta give that guy props. To launch his career with something so ridiculous and bold as the MillionDollarHomepage would have been enough. Love it that he kept going!
This guy knows how to do PR and advertising properly to generate massive amounts of buzz.
There was this article about the MDH where he outlined the exact PR strategy including hiring one of the best PR consultant at the time (sadly I can't find it because I'm on a phone). Point being, the site wasn't an accidental success like a lot of people think it was.
Sure it wasn't 100% guaranteed to be successful as nothing is, but the launch and PR was done like an engineering project. No wonder he is doing it over and over.
There was this article about the MDH where he outlined the exact PR strategy including hiring one of the best PR consultant at the time (sadly I can't find it because I'm on a phone). Point being, the site wasn't an accidental success like a lot of people think it was.
Sure it wasn't 100% guaranteed to be successful as nothing is, but the launch and PR was done like an engineering project. No wonder he is doing it over and over.
I've registered entire defunct image hosts (back from the 2000s) - with thousands of existing old image links. Need to do something interesting with those when I get the time.
How much traffic do you get on it?
I don't have the logs anymore but I remember it being several thousand requests for the image files every month, but I assume it's fairly worthless traffic - interesting though.
Lots of links to random forum posts, where the images are just broken.
Lots of links to random forum posts, where the images are just broken.
If you're looking for SEO value... there's a fairly easy way to check a list of domains. Use the Majestic.com 'bulk backlink checker', and sort by Trust Flow. You'll want to find domains that have a higher TF than CF.
Also keep in mind that many of these domains might not have SEO value, but they may actually have email value (they're still getting emails) which can be monetized.
Also keep in mind that many of these domains might not have SEO value, but they may actually have email value (they're still getting emails) which can be monetized.
How would you monetize the emails?
Interesting and fun project! Also kind of surprised to see this on HN as I recently launched a vaguely similar project (1$ = 1 pixel in a website image), but raising money for charity and designed around a marriage proposal instead of mere advertising.
If anyone was wondering about if people would actually pick these up when this page first hit the front page with no comments, there were 209 domains available. Now ~12 hours later there are 74.
I nearly got when when I first saw them, and there was more availability, but couldn't think of any use for one so held off. I really should have logged all of the domains, and seen if anyone puts anything interesting up on them.
I nearly got when when I first saw them, and there was more availability, but couldn't think of any use for one so held off. I really should have logged all of the domains, and seen if anyone puts anything interesting up on them.
Pirate? Who will guarantee domains will stay the same?
It took me a minute to figure out what this is doing... basically, it shows you which expired domains you can buy that bought pixels on the Million Dollar Homepage.
It doesn't really work all that well (most of the domains are still actually registered but don't resolve), but it's clever!
It doesn't really work all that well (most of the domains are still actually registered but don't resolve), but it's clever!
The ones I checked were all available.
The real question is, will the pixels be reloaded differently if you buy a domain and place a different image there.
The real question is, will the pixels be reloaded differently if you buy a domain and place a different image there.
Well, it is a 15-year-old static image. It won't be changed.
Judging from a pastebin linked from a neighboring comment however, most domains are quite specific enough that pixels can be left as is (you can't really use "clinicalimaging.net" for something other than, well, clinical imaging). In the other words you are really buying a domain and its historical legacy including pixels.
Judging from a pastebin linked from a neighboring comment however, most domains are quite specific enough that pixels can be left as is (you can't really use "clinicalimaging.net" for something other than, well, clinical imaging). In the other words you are really buying a domain and its historical legacy including pixels.
Unfortunately no, the image is static: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/index_files/image-map.p...
My eyes. Hurt. Thanks for the reminder that the 90s of web browsing wasn't the panacea which appeared through my rose-tinted, nostalgia-enabling glasses.
Doesn't look significantly worse than a regular website with the adblocker turned off, tbh. At least the Million Dollar Homepage isn't animated, and doesn't auto-play sound.
<marquee>
Both features were used <blink>heavily</blink> at the time.
</marquee>My favourite Easter egg: <marquee> still works in Chrome.
At least I hope it's an Easter egg, and not left in to provide legacy support ;)
At least I hope it's an Easter egg, and not left in to provide legacy support ;)
It looks like every billboard from the bad part of town collapsing into a crassly commercial singularity.
To be fair, the website was launched in 2005.
Truly a thing of beauty.
I don’t think so. From memory it’s just a big collection of images that were all provided over email and manually added to the page (we got a space just for a laugh at the time).
It's a giant image map (thousands of <area> tags) based on a single 1000x1000px image, which is hosted directly on the million dollar homepage.
no, the pixels stay
I clicked through first (like a good boy), spent 2-3 minutes reading the whole FAQ, then was going to post "can someone dumb this down for me? I don't get it." So thank you.
It is checking DNS resolution, not actual availability.
Here is a list of all the domains that are available (as of when this post had 2 comments): https://pastebin.com/SXWzgxnH
Here is a list of all the domains that are available (as of when this post had 2 comments): https://pastebin.com/SXWzgxnH
How did you produce this list? I checked out the four char domains, 100w.com and ungy.com, and they show as expiring 2024-03-23 and 2019-07-29.
Hey... so the domain checker runs async, so it was behind by a bit. Honestly, didn't expect an influx of interest! It's getting back up to date...
Thanks for sharing, OP. Just sniped one, it'll make the perfect birthday gift.
Before anyone out there buys one of these domains for SEO-purposes:
I work as a technical-SEO consultant and we had the funny idea of checking all these domains about a year ago: None of them are worth buying! None of them has any SEO-potential!
- the page-rank passed from milliondollarhomepage.com to these domains is minimal (huge PR divided through tons of links is worthless)
- domains expired for a long time get some sort of "reset" from Google (we experimented with this - strong domains last used years ago do not rank faster than "fresh" domains)
Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger.
And in general: Buying old domains for backlinks is a waste of time. Getting high-quality backlinks from legit sites and improving your own domain in regards to technical optimization and usability is much more effective - and scalable.
Edit: Improved formatting
I work as a technical-SEO consultant and we had the funny idea of checking all these domains about a year ago: None of them are worth buying! None of them has any SEO-potential!
- the page-rank passed from milliondollarhomepage.com to these domains is minimal (huge PR divided through tons of links is worthless)
- domains expired for a long time get some sort of "reset" from Google (we experimented with this - strong domains last used years ago do not rank faster than "fresh" domains)
Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger.
And in general: Buying old domains for backlinks is a waste of time. Getting high-quality backlinks from legit sites and improving your own domain in regards to technical optimization and usability is much more effective - and scalable.
Edit: Improved formatting
> It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger.
In your opinion, is this ethical?
In your opinion, is this ethical?
In my opinion: It's neither ethical nor necessary!
There are easier ways to get a website ranked. Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product, optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy is much more important than backlinks and page rank. I never had any problems outranking poorly made sites that had a much "stronger" link-profile than my sites.
Needless to say: You will also build a better product/business if you do not waste your focus on cheap SEO-tricks ...
But I do not judge people using these tactics: SEO is daunting-game and - as long as Google acts as intransparent and unpredictable as it has in the past - people will focus on "esoteric" tactics.
There are easier ways to get a website ranked. Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product, optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy is much more important than backlinks and page rank. I never had any problems outranking poorly made sites that had a much "stronger" link-profile than my sites.
Needless to say: You will also build a better product/business if you do not waste your focus on cheap SEO-tricks ...
But I do not judge people using these tactics: SEO is daunting-game and - as long as Google acts as intransparent and unpredictable as it has in the past - people will focus on "esoteric" tactics.
> Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product
I follow a lot of indie game development forums, and one of the most striking things to me is how many people want to hit success with garbage casual mobile games by focusing heavily on app store tips and tricks.
I follow a lot of indie game development forums, and one of the most striking things to me is how many people want to hit success with garbage casual mobile games by focusing heavily on app store tips and tricks.
This sounds like a diplomatic answer so you don't get downvoted. You say you are "technical-SEO consultant" then you say SEO tricks are useless and one should only create good contents and SEO will take care of itself. What are you useful for then (as a consultant)?
Because people need to be told this. Over and over again.
A highly-paid medical doctor saying "You need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight" is not unexpected. The problem is that people really want to eat crap and not exercise and still be healthy.
I (an industrial controls engineer) worked on a website for my employer's small business some years ago. I was given about 40 hours to design and implement the website to describe some 200 products that we've built over the years. Some had pictures, and some even had manuals. Most had some kind of a spreadsheet entry, but between Google (now Open) Refine and some intern hours we had a product page for each. "Magic algorithmic keyword SEO juice" was the desired strategy, such that each product page ought to zoom to the top of Google results for its search term, and I (not being a technical SEO consultant) was unable to effectively convince my boss that hiding 100 copies of the title and thesaurus-generated synonyms in white-on-white text at 0 point at the bottom of the page was not the way to do it, and that linking to it from a useful and therefore popular page would work better.
A lot of small businesses view documentation as pure overhead, to be minimized at all costs. The idea that you'd have a project manager or engineer write up the email you sent (or phone call you narrated) describing how to calibrate an XYZ blagometer, copy edit it, add some diagrams, and post it as an article or whitepaper to improve future sales is viewed as wasteful and not worth the effort.
The SEO industry is like the weight loss industry. When you hear an SEO consultant advocate creating good content, that means they're one of the good ones. If you hear them describe miracle cures, they're a hack.
A highly-paid medical doctor saying "You need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight" is not unexpected. The problem is that people really want to eat crap and not exercise and still be healthy.
I (an industrial controls engineer) worked on a website for my employer's small business some years ago. I was given about 40 hours to design and implement the website to describe some 200 products that we've built over the years. Some had pictures, and some even had manuals. Most had some kind of a spreadsheet entry, but between Google (now Open) Refine and some intern hours we had a product page for each. "Magic algorithmic keyword SEO juice" was the desired strategy, such that each product page ought to zoom to the top of Google results for its search term, and I (not being a technical SEO consultant) was unable to effectively convince my boss that hiding 100 copies of the title and thesaurus-generated synonyms in white-on-white text at 0 point at the bottom of the page was not the way to do it, and that linking to it from a useful and therefore popular page would work better.
A lot of small businesses view documentation as pure overhead, to be minimized at all costs. The idea that you'd have a project manager or engineer write up the email you sent (or phone call you narrated) describing how to calibrate an XYZ blagometer, copy edit it, add some diagrams, and post it as an article or whitepaper to improve future sales is viewed as wasteful and not worth the effort.
The SEO industry is like the weight loss industry. When you hear an SEO consultant advocate creating good content, that means they're one of the good ones. If you hear them describe miracle cures, they're a hack.
Hello - good question!
Technical SEO - as I use the term - describes tasks like the following:
1) Performance optimization (One of the most important tasks)
It's basically me telling my clients that their Devs were right all along and that they have to improve their site's speed
2) UX feedback (Help in terms of usability and user experience because unusable sites will rank much worse on Google)
This is basically me telling my clients that their "fancy" 200.000 $ redesign will never rank in Google and that they have to use a "boring" design. (Their Devs were right again ...)
3) Improve internal linking (Prioritize important pages with high search volume, deprioritize less important pages)
More complicated, but this is one of the most important tasks for "big" websites (e-commerce, news, travel, ...) and one of the biggest levers to improve rankings
4) manage URL-corpus
One of my clients' had every single article of his indexed on more than 5 different URLs (eg. https://www.website.com/correct-url, https://www.website.com/correct-url/, https://www.website.com/correct-url?preview, https://www.website.com/correct-url/?preview,https://www.web..., https://www.website.com/?1234). Each URL hat internal links pointing to it, so the domain's "power" was split through hundreds of thousands of URLs. Google hates this and traffic exploded after fixing this.
...
A lot of other related tasks are not that easy to explain for me in text (I am a non-native English speaker and this comment already took me 20 minutes up until here ...) and my guidelines vary from website to website.
But, essentially, I help clients to adhere to web standards and optimize their websites for their users. The last "spammy" backlink I build for a project other than my side-projects (experiments) was probably more than 5 years ago ...
Technical SEO - as I use the term - describes tasks like the following:
1) Performance optimization (One of the most important tasks)
It's basically me telling my clients that their Devs were right all along and that they have to improve their site's speed
2) UX feedback (Help in terms of usability and user experience because unusable sites will rank much worse on Google)
This is basically me telling my clients that their "fancy" 200.000 $ redesign will never rank in Google and that they have to use a "boring" design. (Their Devs were right again ...)
3) Improve internal linking (Prioritize important pages with high search volume, deprioritize less important pages)
More complicated, but this is one of the most important tasks for "big" websites (e-commerce, news, travel, ...) and one of the biggest levers to improve rankings
4) manage URL-corpus
One of my clients' had every single article of his indexed on more than 5 different URLs (eg. https://www.website.com/correct-url, https://www.website.com/correct-url/, https://www.website.com/correct-url?preview, https://www.website.com/correct-url/?preview,https://www.web..., https://www.website.com/?1234). Each URL hat internal links pointing to it, so the domain's "power" was split through hundreds of thousands of URLs. Google hates this and traffic exploded after fixing this.
...
A lot of other related tasks are not that easy to explain for me in text (I am a non-native English speaker and this comment already took me 20 minutes up until here ...) and my guidelines vary from website to website.
But, essentially, I help clients to adhere to web standards and optimize their websites for their users. The last "spammy" backlink I build for a project other than my side-projects (experiments) was probably more than 5 years ago ...
you say SEO tricks are useless
SEO tricks are useless, but that's not the same as saying SEO is useless:
> optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy
That's a lot of what (non-jerky) SEO is these days.
One can argue that it's not something worth hiring an SEO consultant for, as there's enough info floating around out there to do this yourself if you're moderately savvy. But there are folks who aren't savvy about that sort of thing, as well as folks who think it's just worth paying someone else to worry about it.
SEO tricks are useless, but that's not the same as saying SEO is useless:
> optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy
That's a lot of what (non-jerky) SEO is these days.
One can argue that it's not something worth hiring an SEO consultant for, as there's enough info floating around out there to do this yourself if you're moderately savvy. But there are folks who aren't savvy about that sort of thing, as well as folks who think it's just worth paying someone else to worry about it.
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In your opinion, is it not ethical? Should people not buy the real-estate either because a company went out of business there?
If you buy the storefront of a company that went out of business, keep the signage so their old customers will come in looking for them, and install a conveyor belt that whisks them directly to your store instead, yeah, that's unethical.
There's honestly not a great meatspace analogy to the situation, no matter how you look at it. But it's clearly not the same as just buying foreclosed real estate.
There's honestly not a great meatspace analogy to the situation, no matter how you look at it. But it's clearly not the same as just buying foreclosed real estate.
My local convience store is called Tom's.. It has been around for many years. The current chinese owners never changed the name nor the owners before. Same sign, same products.. nothing unethical.
Kind of like when a big company buys a smaller company and keeps the brand name.
Kind of like when a big company buys a smaller company and keeps the brand name.
> Same sign, same products.. nothing unethical.
Exactly. If it's basically the same business under new management, there's nothing wrong with keeping the name. If it's a new business with no relationship to the old, trading on the name to grant false credibility and bring confused customers into their own shop, that's unethical.
Exactly. If it's basically the same business under new management, there's nothing wrong with keeping the name. If it's a new business with no relationship to the old, trading on the name to grant false credibility and bring confused customers into their own shop, that's unethical.
And kinda stupid if you're trying to game the reputation of a business that went bust.
Buying a doctor’s practice feels a lot like this to me.
I can imagine circumstances where I’d find it ethical, for example when the expired domain name in itself is useful to you (say, you want to move your own site to wisconsincarpetcleaners.com instead of .info or whatever)
If you do it only to freeload off someone else’s reputation, that doesn’t seem great to me. For the comparison to real-estate, I have nothing to add beyond what PhasmaFelis wrote.
If you do it only to freeload off someone else’s reputation, that doesn’t seem great to me. For the comparison to real-estate, I have nothing to add beyond what PhasmaFelis wrote.
Nothing about SEO is ethical. It’s about appearing on google when you wouldn’t under natural circumstances.
What Google has done over the years is thwart some of the scummy SEO practices by penalizing websites that do it; a big part of current-day SEO practices are to make your website conform to web and content standards. Basically, turn it into a decent site.
There's still the black market SEO where people hire spambots to send links, but that's been thwarted / voided by just adding a nofollow to links in user generated content like comments.
There's still the black market SEO where people hire spambots to send links, but that's been thwarted / voided by just adding a nofollow to links in user generated content like comments.
but then you wouldn't do "search engine optimization", but rather proper web engineering.
SEO has become an ambigous, all encompassing term. "Proper web engineer" is now a subcategory of SEO.
Also "proper web engineering" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Also "proper web engineering" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
PWE -- peewee.
The point is there's a Venn diagram where these two standards overlap.
It depends on the type of SEO. SEO includes, for instance, making sure that your page loads quickly when otherwise you wouldn’t have prioritized that. A lot of it is unethical though.
What, precisely, is "natural" about Google?
The progression towards evil as it became more of a monopoly.
> Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger.
I never understood how this works. What do you do with these domains? Do you just redirect them to the main business site or do you create a supporting site on them that heavily links to the business site?
Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain.
I never understood how this works. What do you do with these domains? Do you just redirect them to the main business site or do you create a supporting site on them that heavily links to the business site?
Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain.
> Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain.
It doesn't have to get any attention. Links (or a redirect, or other things) from it will still (massively, depending on the quality of the domain) improve your ranking.
You could also throw some unrelated content on it, and will likely rank for quite a while until somebody complains loud enough that Google manually sets up a -100 on your domain.
It doesn't have to get any attention. Links (or a redirect, or other things) from it will still (massively, depending on the quality of the domain) improve your ranking.
You could also throw some unrelated content on it, and will likely rank for quite a while until somebody complains loud enough that Google manually sets up a -100 on your domain.
Is this domain-name-is-everything.nonsense still a thing? Not in SEO myself, but even a few years back, the ranking was heavily shifted towards actual content, never mind the domain name.
For someone who wanted to learn cutting-edge SEO (for Google mainly) what are some good resources ?
>And in general: Buying old domains for backlinks is a waste of time. Getting high-quality backlinks from legit sites and improving your own domain in regards to technical optimization and usability is much more effective - and scalable.
Yeah no kidding. Like saying that a 5 star hostel is nicer than 1 star one. Obviously, it's much more epxnsive. If buying a $11 expired domain is good enough to help get the page indexed, then it may be worth it even if does not help your rankings.
>Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger.
yea this is old method that is saturated. there are many of ppl with programs scanning for expired domains
Yeah no kidding. Like saying that a 5 star hostel is nicer than 1 star one. Obviously, it's much more epxnsive. If buying a $11 expired domain is good enough to help get the page indexed, then it may be worth it even if does not help your rankings.
>Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger.
yea this is old method that is saturated. there are many of ppl with programs scanning for expired domains
I wonder what kind of traffic the million dollar homepage generates, both daily now, but also in its timespan.
Regardless of the worth of incoming hits from tmdhp, I think this pixel pirate club is a funny idea and a blast into the past!
Regardless of the worth of incoming hits from tmdhp, I think this pixel pirate club is a funny idea and a blast into the past!
I guess what this is, is up to everyone themselves. For some, this is an art project while to others its a scam.
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I actually had this idea a few months ago... this repo contains the full list of extracted domains, as well as a trivial script I used for checking domain availability.
https://github.com/om3n07/MillionDollarHomepageDomainTravers...
https://github.com/om3n07/MillionDollarHomepageDomainTravers...
I’m more interested in the domain name being displayed as several skull and crossbones icons in iOS.
I didn’t know icons could be used in a url.
I didn’t know icons could be used in a url.
Yes, you can use most Unicode in a domain name these days, by using Punycode, but not all browsers support it. In this case, "xn--h4haaaa.ws" displays as "️️️️️<5x skull-and-crossbones emoji>.ws" in certain browsers, including iOS Safari.
This site is using a bit of clientside JS [1] to automatically redirect the user from "xn--h4haaaa.ws" to "pixelpirate.club" and vice versa, depending on if your browser supports "Emoji domains" [2].
[1] https://github.com/jonroig/emojiurlifier
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji_domain
This site is using a bit of clientside JS [1] to automatically redirect the user from "xn--h4haaaa.ws" to "pixelpirate.club" and vice versa, depending on if your browser supports "Emoji domains" [2].
[1] https://github.com/jonroig/emojiurlifier
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji_domain
Thanks. I suspected the redirect I saw might be related to that since the domain name above obviously wasn’t the same thing I was seeing.
[deleted]
Whoa. Woke up to my project on the front page of Hackernews.
Obviously, this is kind of a dumb idea... but I tried to create it in the voice of a guy who really, really thinks the MillionDollarHomepage is most important thing in the world. Glad people are enjoying it.
Obviously, this is kind of a dumb idea... but I tried to create it in the voice of a guy who really, really thinks the MillionDollarHomepage is most important thing in the world. Glad people are enjoying it.
Ha, Congrats :)
Also hello from Tempe as well! Are you still at GoDaddy? I'm a dev lead over at DriveTime. Always fun to run into folks in AZ here.
Also hello from Tempe as well! Are you still at GoDaddy? I'm a dev lead over at DriveTime. Always fun to run into folks in AZ here.
Ahh... right on! I'm in Scottsdale now. To me, it feels like we're starting to really make things happen in AZ, from a tech perspective. Lots of talented people are returning here to raise families, get some kind of work / life balance, etc...
Please, do not ruin browser's history. Ever.
To all the downvoteres. In all seriousness, it's been told a million times that breaking user's back button is a bad practice. The OPs project is great, no complains here, respect. But why in the world my browser history look like this: https://imgur.com/a/90WAGYq ?
A billion dollar homepage by the same founder [1]
[1] https://calm.com