Interview with One-Cent-Per-Pixel.

First of please introduce yourself and your site to our readers?

We are a small company and since 1995 in the internet business running databases, company directories and lexicons of different topics. With our most recent project we used the idea of a pixel design for publishing the list of the 5,000 biggest companies in Europe in a total different and unusual form of conventional directories. In a similar project we use this design to publish our customer list of over 800 entries.

Most people have been inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage, where did you get your inspiration from?

I was searching already very long for a good idea to publish the big european companies and our customer list in a compressed form. But it was Alex Tew with his page which inspired me for the current design.

What software do you use to run your pixel page and why did you choose it?

Most of the current software of our database is written in Visual Basic. And because there must be a strong connection to the current databases, the pixel page is also produced by software written in VB.

What makes your site different or special, what angle have you taken for your Pixel page?

We don't run after the big money. Our strategy is to fill the pixels first with useful and interesting content. So until we reach this point, the page is open and free for interesting pixels. And then maybe the last 10% of all pixels will be sold. But then the buyer will already benefit from the traffic and PageRank™ which he will get.

Another unusual thing is that most of the pixels are not fixed to a specific location. Each pixel block has a fixed priority different to the other pixel blocks and according to this nearly every day the pixels will be placed in a new arrangement.

And our company is over 10 years old and so, as far as I know, one of the oldest pixel page providers. This ensures that our page will be maintained for a long time.

Last not least: Our pixels will be rented for some month, not sold for years. This guarantees that we have to deliver a good service because we want our customers that they will renew their contract. We do not follow the "place-and-forget" strategy of some other providers.

The original pixel page generated traffic mainly through viral marketing mainly spawned by media interest, how do you generate traffic to your site?

Because of the 5000 popular company names, Google will bring some traffic to us. Also because we are not a pixel-desert, people will like to look and search what is behind the graphics. And because it's free, we will get plenty of nice links, icons and graphics. For example, Easter is coming faster than mostly expected. Why not place some easter eggs and let your friends search for them?

What do you offer potential advertisers, how much do you charge and how much traffic do you envisage an advertiser could generate by advertising with you?

Whenever we will start to charge, our customer will get more in form of traffic and PageRank. But we are at the beginning, so the only thing we ask now of our customers is: "Give us a graphic, a URL and some nice text for the title/tooltip. We do the rest."

Currently the top 5 Alexa ranked pixel sites enjoy a lot of interest from the public. How long do you think this will last, is there a long term future for pixel pages?

The internet is a follower of the printed media. And so pixel pages are followers of the mixed/miscellaneous advertisements, which you can find in some newspapers or the yellow press. And because these ads are living long, the pixel pages will also survive but on a higher level of quality and service.

Besides your own pixel page, which other pixel page do you secretly admire and why?

I like full and interesting pages. So I admire the original and some free pages which are pretty full and interesting.

Thanks for your time in answering these questions. Before you go are there any comments you want to impart to our pixel hungry readership?

Thanks for your attention and have a look at the different remarkable, funny and interesting things behind the pixels.