Interview with PixelWord.

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

My name is James Kearsley, I’m 25, from Surrey in the South of England. My website is The Pixelword - the words first tactical advertising game and the first ever interactive pixel advertising site, which was established the second week into February.

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

As with most other pixel site owners, the initial idea to try my hand at pixel advertising came from the Million Dollar Homepage. Alex Tew’s site opened many people’s eyes to what can be achieved on the internet with an original idea, purely through a ‘viral’ effect. The idea for my site came out of my frustration at the lack of creativity and innovation amongst the majority of advertising sites out there - nobody seemed interested in progressing this novel and very unique form of advertising beyond what had already been done. I wanted to change that by producing an entirely new site which took the pixel advertising genre to the next level in a big way. Copying the original and labeling it with a new ‘million-dollar’ name just isn’t cricket.

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

The software I use is entirely self-developed. I didn’t want to purchase a script and adapt it since I felt that would defeat the object of what I wanted to achieve. I wanted an entirely original site design and script to go along with the entirely new genre - It took 2 months of planning, development and fine tuning to come up with the site.

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

My site is the world’s first interactive pixel advertising game, the first purely pixel advertising site which contains real content, the first that provides a reason to visit and a reason to return. It is also the first ever to offer tactics to advertisers who wish to use pixel advertising as a service. It’s essentially a crossword that people can harness as an advertising service in order to convert human curiosity into traffic!

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

Obviously pixel advertising sites are useless unless they’re marketed properly! The Pixelword has already undergone a great deal of marketing effort - including; sponsorship via other pixel advertising sites, search engine submission and promotion, pay-per-click advertising, link exchanges with other high-ranking sites, press releases, independent journalists reports, interviews & articles. Most recently the site has generated offline media interest in the form of local and national newspapers, with possible reports pending in some major newspapers.

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?

In the first week of being tracked by Alexa, my ranking was in the region of 5 million. In it’s second week it rose by 3 and a half million to 1,578,660. This week my average is 217,801 - and my traffic is rising considerably on a steep curve. At the moment reports seem to indicate that many people are repeatedly visiting the site to check upon the progression of the puzzle, which is creating a snowball effect in terms of page views.

The key to my site is that advertisers are encouraged to interact with adverts by rolling over them - when they do so, the corresponding letter for that part of the crossword is revealed. It is cheaper to place an advert when you know the letter for the position you wish to advertise upon, so this encourages advertisers - not just users - to interact with the adverts that are already placed.

Advertisers can either rent blocks or purchase them. Fees range from $2 to $400. Some of my current advertisers are reporting an extra 100 unique visitors to their site each week. Obviously these figures will increase inline with the traffic throughput of the site.

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?

I think at the moment the pixel ‘craze’ is too young to be defined as an industry. It needs time to be more fully refined in order to show what works and what doesn’t. In the meantime there is a lot of hype amongst the public, which is proving an extremely successful resource to those who wish to generate traffic to their site quickly and efficiently. I do however think that many pixel webmasters are eager to jump on the bandwagon by simply copying, which is saturating the market and causing problems. A large number of people don’t seem to realize that it’s not the pixel advertising concept that is causing the traffic. A lot of unoriginal pixel advertising sites are surviving solely on the interest that Tew’s site generated - it’s purely a secondary effect. Be original! For example, how many people in the world have ever used a crossword as advertising? I’d hazard a guess at none! In implementing my site I’m not only appealing to the curious side of human nature that makes people click on these micro adverts, but I’m appealing to curious side of human nature that is evoked by trying to solve a crossword.

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

http://www.virtualworldrealestate.com/ is an example of a site that is very original, not only in it’s idea but in its execution. You can tell it’s been developed by the owner without any purchase of a pre-fab script. Besides that I obviously admire the original, but Alex hardly needs any more promotion now, does he! ;).

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 time and remember: creativity does pay!

Just the one thing before I go though:

kk,47 Across: (4) Seno, or is one being backwards again?