A savvy student has re-vamped a 10-year-old brainwave to pay off his university debts – and has already raked in £40,000.
Enterprising Richard Wilson, 19, is selling individual pixels on a website for a dollar a piece that companies can buy to advertise themselves online.
It was inspired by the genius idea of Alex Tew 10 years ago, who set up the Million Dollar Homepage under the same principle which quickly sold out, netting him $1 million.
A decade on, Richard thought it might work again – although he has added a twist to his concept.
The Irish teenager, who is going to University College London in September to study business information systems, set up Milliondollarbillboard.club just three weeks ago for some extra money to help him through his education.
If he sells all of his pixels he plans to use some of the money to buy physical billboards in major cities to help promote the companies who bought into his marketing scheme.
He shouldn't have much problem, as he is currently making about $20,000 (£13,000) a week from selling the pixels, with one advertiser buying 8,000 pixels in one go.
Richard told Metro: "A person purchasing 8,000 Pixels is just unreal. That's $8,000 in the space of 10 seconds. It's a lot to take in."
And what does he plan to do with all that cash once he leaves uni?
He said: "With the money left over I hope to build a non-profit organisation after university where I can work as a trustee but a lot of the money I earn will go back into providing a high quality service for customers that purchase pixels."