There was a lot of buzz recently over Alex Tew's Million Dollar Homepage. He made a million dollars within 6 months selling pixels for a buck a piece. This feat created a stir within the Internet Marketing Community and people were formulating million dollar ideas of their own. Many tried to replicate Alex's pixel phenomenon but without much success.



Alex made us realize that making a million dollars online is possible and all it requires is some smart, out of the box thinking. In this article, I will try to categorize the ingredients required to formulate your own million dollar idea. The Internet is vast and you can get lost in all the information, unless you have a clear thinking.

When you start working on your million dollar idea, you have to answer three essential questions - who will pay you, why will they pay you and how much will they pay you? Answer these basic questions to all your ideas and you will end up with a winner. Let us explore each of these individually.

Who Will Pay You?

This is the first question you have to ask yourself. From where are you getting your revenue? You can be paid directly by customers, which was the case with Alex's pixel website. Besides this, the most popular avenues used by Internet Marketers today are affiliate programs and contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network. There are a lot of other methods you can get paid but we will stick with the ones mentioned because they are the most popular.

When you want to come up with a million dollar idea, you should be clear about your revenue model. Each one of these methods can be rewarding if your idea is good. Some people may argue that getting paid directly by customers is the best model. But in my experience, you can do equally well with affiliate programs and contextual advertising.

Why Will They Pay You?

So you have frozen on your revenue model. The next step is to figure out why these guys will pay you. Whether you are getting paid by customers, a merchant running affiliate programs or contextual advertisers, there has to be a strong enough reason for getting paid. Don't look at this question at the surface level. Explore deeply the benefits that you are offering for getting paid.

If you are getting paid directly by customers, what is it that you are offering to them? Is it worth the money for your customers? If not, you need to make your product or service valuable enough to justify the payment. If your revenue model includes affiliate programs, then what are you offering which will make customers buy through your affiliate links?

Ask yourself questions like these and get to the bottom of your offering. The bottom line is that unless you are adding value to your end customers, you won't make a dime. Your million dollar idea should focus on providing something useful to your customers, something which will make them act the way you want them to.

How Much Will They Pay You?

The road to a million bucks can be as long or short as you want it to be. If you are getting paid 1 cent at a time for a customer action, you may never see a million dollars in your bank account. Your idea should revolve around a business model which pays you a handsome amount per "action". An action here is defined as that activity which triggers a payment for you. If you use Google Adsense, the action is a website visitor clicking on your Adsense ad. If you are promoting affiliate programs, the action is someone buying through your affiliate link. Each action has a reward associated with it. It can be 5 cents or a $100. I am not saying that the $100 action will make you a millionaire faster than the 5 cents action. The number of times the action is repeated might differ greatly between the two. Your idea should find a good combination of the reward and the frequency of the action. This is the key to making a quick million on the Internet.

Conclusion

Once you have answered these questions for each of your ideas, a clear picture will start emerging. You will have an in depth understanding of your ideas and their potential. The idea with the highest potential is one which has a clear revenue model, adds value to the end customers and has a high reward volume and frequency. Your million dollar idea may be worth much more than you think.