Grad Students Dream Up $1-a-Letter Web Site
Ready to taste envy? To burn with regret? Meet Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe. They’re selling words at a buck per letter. Donnelly, 22, and Munroe, 23 — graduate students at the University of Ulster-Belfast — dreamed up the Big Word Project while brainstorming a mass collaboration Web site that would let Donnelly use his viral marketing ideas and Munroe hone his Ruby on Rails skills.
“Words mean different things to different people,” Donnelly says, “so we thought, why not let people redefine them?” When you buy a word on thebigwordproject.com, you can link that term from the dictionary-like site to any other site, which then becomes the word’s new “definition.” It’s also a cheap way to place an ad.
It’s reminiscent of the Million Dollar Homepage, which sold a million pixels for $1 a pop. But with nearly all 291,500 Oxford English Dictionary entries in inventory — plus verb forms, plural nouns, comparatives, superlatives, and American spellings — Donnelly and Munroe estimate they could do half a million better.
Two weeks after launch, the duo had unloaded more than 2,000 words, from “a” ($1) to “zyzzyva” ($7).
Photo by James Ellerker.
Reginald on May 6th, 2008 2:08 pm
The concept of this post is very interesting, a dollar per word…hmmm!!!!
Angela on May 6th, 2008 9:04 pm
I like it. It’s definitely a fun, new way to advertise and for them to benefit from a great idea!
Dane on May 6th, 2008 9:27 pm
Another one of those “why didn’t I think of that” ideas.
Neville on May 6th, 2008 11:42 pm
I went ahead and purchased a couple words in case the site turns into another MillionDollarHomepage!
XLOR on May 7th, 2008 8:10 am
Interesting..where were my thoughts..because I could become a creater of this idea. Really, why didn’t i thought about it?
Ben Jones on May 7th, 2008 2:57 pm
I’m not even sure I totally understand the concept….but I can grasp the fact that I should be jealous that I didn’t think of it!
Melanie D. on May 8th, 2008 11:56 am
Brilliant! A wordsmith like me would love this new site. Too bad this $1 per word never crossed my mind. I can already tell that this idea will make these two boys famous. I just hope that their site has something for a good cause.
Tom on May 11th, 2008 1:14 am
Kids nowadays amaze me. Well, they should. These kids have proven that youth is not wasted on the young.
cliff on May 11th, 2008 5:05 am
The idea is simple yet interesting.
Unfortunately,I have no more money to buy 12 words.
Rich on May 11th, 2008 10:31 am
Just a note on the student who did the MillionDollarHome Page.
When he made $100,000 or so he took $40,000 and hired a publicist. This publicist got him on TV news shows, etc. and got the project tons of publicity.
I’m sure the publicist was a big reason for the success.
Reginald on May 13th, 2008 11:26 am
Rich has a point. Is the full picture of the MillionDollarHome page’s position being disclosed? Considering that the business eventually ended up paying or investing in marketing ventures and/or a publicist in this case.
However, it should be emphasized that the student who thought up of the MillionDollareHomePage still came up with the concept in spite of the fact that he actually spent money on other marketing ventures once he had made a million dollars.
jOHN on June 27th, 2008 2:31 pm
Nice idea, I also found a similar site where you can buy words: http://www.linkinword.com
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