Do you know why Alex started from sending some info about his Next Big Thing only to his loyal supporters, rather then publishing it as an open press release? I, for example, subscribed for Alex's email alerts many months ago, but got my first lucky chance to see it only after some anonymous source revealed a secretly(!) made screenshot of pixelotto.com.
Alex has image of an ordinary child, but he never makes childish mistakes.
The answer is, from marketing point of view, it's much easier to trade your ideas within a closed community of your funs.
According to pixelotto sales, the army of his previous clients became a first echelon pushing Alex's ideas to masses. Free for Alex.
I don't know about end users, but among advertisers pixelotto is booming! Still not sure how they will feel after their ads are wiped out at end of the cycle.
It's true, even before official launching, Alex raised rather impressive amount of $$$. My guess is it's only because he did it BEFORE going public. If all those people had opportunity to discuss it on forums, it may be the figures could be different.
Or may be not...
The intersting thing is, majority of serious experts think the pixelotto idea has no future. Nevertheless, as I mentioned yesterday at the digg.com forum:
"While we are discussing this, Alex's Prize Fund rises ($110,300 at the moment). He does not read digg.com, or what?!!!"
It may be his clients do visit the forums. For example, to create a wave of artificial buzz, which is a must for similar projects. I can be wrong, but huge overnight success for related articles looks suspicious.
It's not to say Alex hired all those people. Rather, there is a common financial interest. There might have been some kind of coordination from Alex's PR advisers too.
A great number of people started clicking it like crazy!
Did They Read What They Click?
"I don't know anyone who doesn't want to win $1m dollars" said Alex to BBC. Right, but what's the price?
Price? "Pixelotto is a 100% free-to-play lottery", says Alex.
I would add: Ideally, you should play his free game from the place on our planet where Internet access is 100% free. For the time I spent for writing these words Internet cafe charged me more than Alex's minimal $2.
But I must admit, announcing a free access to the game is a genius move. For Alex personally! Some people say this is how he bypasses UK's law restrictions and additional tax burden for gambling businesses.
Don't get me wrong, I wish good luck to Alex!
And even devoted to his pixelotto a special news webpage:
1.mini-news.com
I just feel that sometimes criticism is a more valuable input than unconditional support. Although it's quite legal, overloading Internet with tons of useless requests doesn't look good.
If previous Alex's project could be called a Thing for Viewing, this one is a
Thing for Clicking!
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