A debt-ridden university student from the United Kingdom has copied another student’s million-dollar concept by selling pixels to advertisers — this time with naked ambition.
StripTheStudent.com — “One degree. Lots of debt. No shame.” — was developed by Daniel Chinnery, who intends to raise $1-million to pay off his study debt by selling 10 000 blocks of 10 pixels by 10 pixels for $100 each, gradually revealing a picture of him naked when all is sold. He also offers buyers a link to the website of their choice.
Chinnery told the Mail & Guardian Online on Tuesday that he promises to give what he doesn’t need to charities, so his website is not only meant to pay off his student debts, but also about helping people in need.
He wrote on his website that he thought the Million Dollar Homepage was a great idea.
“It deserves to be ripped off mercilessly. In order to be successful, I realised I had to take it one step further and offer a truly irreplaceable bounty. Thus, I offer to you my naked body,” he wrote.
He said he developed the website because he will be graduating in July this year with more than £20 000 debt.
According to statistics from Creditaction.org.uk — a website aimed at helping people in the UK manage their money more efficiently — the average owed by every British adult is approximately £24 636.
“I’m actually quite shy and did not think I would ever resort to this,” added Chinnery on his website.
“Obviously there are probably a million Million Dollar Homepage rip-offs. StripTheStudent.com is, of course, one of them. However, I’d like to think that I am the only one prepared to suffer worldwide humiliation to pay for university,” he told the M&G Online.
When asked if there is anything special about his nude picture, he replied: “It’s certainly a unique picture — I can safely say that no other naked pictures of me exist (unless the press have raided the family photo album already), but whether anyone would claim it’s worth $1-million is another question entirely. But then I guess the flipside is that once it’s revealed, I can charge people to cover it back up again if it really is seen to be objectionable!”
He said his site has only been operational for a week, but has sold $600-worth of pixels to day.
“I haven’t really had time to promote it, as I’m sitting my mid-term exams all week. I spend half of my days sifting through e-mails, which isn’t good for my revision,” he said.
The Million Dollar Homepage was designed by Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student in the UK, in December last year. The concept was created to pay for Tew’s university fees, and three weeks after he launched the website, he wrote in a blog that he had already raised his entire tuition fee.
Tew’s site contains one million pixels and sells at least 100 pixels at a time. Every pixel costs $1. Anyone can buy pixels to advertise on the site, paying at least $100 for the minimum of 100 pixels. Once a visitor clicks on the advert, a new window will open and redirect the visitor to the business’ homepage.
Chinnery said on StripTheStudent.com: “I’m doing this to pay off my student loan because I don’t fancy the whole ‘getting a job’ alternative.
“I am not the type of student who spends all day watching daytime TV, struggles to locate a bathtub or leaves their half-eaten kebab in your front garden. Therefore, I do not rightly deserve the punishment of 18 months in a minimum-wage job to fund my degree — please help me!
“My homosexual French friend once asked how much it’d take for me to post pictures of my naked body on the internet. I loosely said $100 000, thinking I’d never get the chance to sell anything for that much — but the internet is a crazy thing, so who knows, it might just work!”
He added: “I’d like to thank Alex Tew for proving that the internet really is a crazy thing.”