Advertising and new ideas?

Normally I don't jump on the big ad generating band wagon, it was a hard choice for me to just select the little "Google Adsense" on my blog but I figured it's not that annoying and if it generates a few bucks then OK. I refuse however to push it and try to "optimize" it for big time revenue. Maybe I'm behind the times but I do this for me and anyone who might want to listen...

Anyway I received a mail, unsolicited and I almost deleted it as SPAM however, I didn't. The mail was from Nir Dahan and he has a website called BidTheGrid.com and after a few emails I learned that he was inspired by that young guy in England with the "Million Pixels" website, the one where he sold each pixel of space on his webpage for $1 he sold them all and made a million - not bad. Well Nir has a new idea and that is sell grids on his website of various sizes.

I cant deny it was the "milliondollarhomepage" from Alex Tew. it was indeed genius. I also saw all the other pixel sites trying to imitate him and I thought I wanted something different. it is true that I will be labeled as a copy, but I think it is not avoidable after his success. I truly believe I got something different if people dwell upon it for a while. bidthegrid is supposed to be dynamic, ads change, and hopefully will reflect the TRUE value of my advertizing space. it is a sort of internet-economy experiment one can say. One of the things that intruige me most is to see the dynamics if (hopefully) the site will shoot off.

After paying your image is there for 24 hours but afterwards it stays there until someone else pays to basically remove yours and add there's.

I chose one of the small Grid points and I uploaded my "favicon" and linked things to my main Cmehil.com site.

Now the terms and conditions are pretty straight forward:

• Your banner and link will be displayed for a minimum of 24 hours from the time it is posted.
  
• After the initial 24 hours, your banner and link will be displayed until someone else pays for the square at the higher price point.
  
• Banners are for hire, you would not own any part of the site by paying for these squares.
  
  
• BidTheGrid.com reserves the right to accept or reject any of the applications. Adult and offensive material will be rejected; this applies to both banner and link content. What's adult/offensive? We decide; if you are in doubt, email us.
  
• After your payment has been accepted, there will be some processing time for approving and updating the site. This period will be as short as possible and will depend on how active the site is.
  
• There will be no refunds, so take care choosing the information you provide us (i.e. link, banner, etc...) Once submitted they will not be modified.
  
• We only accept banners in the exact size of the square, they must be in the JPEG (.jpg) format and not exceed 20KB.
  
• All links must start with 'http://'.
  
• Banners should be sent to us as soon as payment is made... we'll allow for 24 hours for them to arrive.
  
• BidTheGrid.com reserves the right to remove your banner and link and resell the space IF your link ever points to adult or offensive content.
  
  
• It is possible to pay for several successive denominations in order to guarantee multiple 24 hour periods.
  
• Once a square reaches a value of $10,000, it will no longer be available for hire and the current owner's banner and link will persist.
  
• The site will be available at least until March 2009. We'll do everything in our power to have it available 100% of the time for the duration; unfortunately, events beyond our control may bring it down for short periods.
  
• Only the information you chose to be displayed will ever be shown; no other information will ever be provided to 3rd parties.
  
• Only one free square per customer.
  
• All times displayed on the page are GMT.
  

However, and it's a point I will have to ask - it says only one free square per customer - is a customer a person or a website?

Taking the chance I chose one of the larger grids for a photo of me and a link to this site, my blog. Now as I view these two things as completely separate and one does not really link to the other, sub domain yes but for me complete separate that should count as a second customer.

I spoke with Nir and he of course confirmed that,

both, as long as the site is different, we accept both ads!

The next question I had for him was of course what type of traffic to expect? I mean I Googled "Bidthegrid" and got nothing (a day later 2 entries), I Googled "bid the grid" and got quite a few hits but not this particular site, so where is the value - OK intially free so that's fine I don't spend and if I get hits from it then "bonus" but what if I do spend for a grid how do I initially calculate the value? Nir had this to say,

ok, that is a fair point, but this is the whole idea. We intentionally
didn't advertize ourselves before we started (5 days ago officially). We wanted to be anonymous to the world and one day "just pop up". We spread the word to a few friends, and to several weblogs, and we hope it will start the ball rolling.

As I said I'm not one for pushing ads BUT I do syndicate my blog and send out my RSS feeds to generate more traffic to my site, we all like to see those numbers increase - more importantly for me though is I like to my comments increase - OK separate issue. Anyway though this is why I felt not only OK with sending in my two links but also to take the time to speak to Nir (he's got an "Anonymous Coward" working with him as well) and to help him promote his site which in turn helps me promote mine.

Speaking of which I've had 5 hits from BidTheGrid.com as this blog was being posted, and that's after less than 24 hours. Not bad for the beginning I guess...