A 28-year-old Indian woman who last December started www.crorepatipage.com, an advertising billboard on the Internet for Indians alone, has already earned around $5000, not an insignificant sum in India, The Hindu Business Line reports.
Sunaina Bansal hopes to emulate the success of Briton Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Home Page from which Tew reportedly earned a million dollars. ‘Crorepati’ is a Hindi word that means ‘One who owns a crore of Rupees.’ A crore is equal to 10 million, so a crore of rupees would be about $227,272. The better-known advertisers on Bansal’s page are matrimonial site Shaadi.com, engineering conglomerate Kirloskar and rediff.com.
Bansal started the page offering one million pixels — that will remain active for a minimum of five years –for 10 rupees each, which is 23 cents. Advertisers can buy these pixels in 100 pixel-squares measuring 10 by 10 pixels and the page has been designed to have 10,000 of 100 pixel squares. A click on each advertisement or slogan links visitors to the advertiser’s Web page.
“If a housewife like me can harness the power of the Internet to make a revolution, I am confident that Indian women of today can get increasingly familiar with this new medium and join in boosting the Indian Internet community,” Bansal says, adding that she would like to influence Indian women, “to gear up and join in the Internet revolution in India.”
Does this kind of gimmick work? It seems like most advertisers on Tew’s site did it because they knew it would attract a lot of publicity. So the dozens of copycat sites spawned by Tew’s success would not have done as well as they couldn’t beat having Tew’s first-mover advantage.
Update: Due to my mistake, we used the million dollar page, instead of a million rupee page in the headline - Om
19 comments so far
2:39 AM PT
Old news.Oh please, dumb copy.Not worth space on GigaOm.
2:41 AM PT
This isn’t the only Indian copy of the Million Dollar Page. There is also (link) at Re. 1 a block. What’s really strange about lakhpatipage is that the seems to be looking to make only Rs. 10001 (~ $227) from it. There’s a Shaadi.com advertisement there too.
And about the “getting the Indian women on to the net” bit - she could have just smiiled for the camera and said “World Peace”. That and the “By an Indian woman. For the Indian People” tagline is just the kind of fallacious appeal to emotions that I dislike. Smart tactic, maybe.
3:43 AM PT
Old news and worthless story. Cant indian come up with original and intuitives ideas themselves rather than copying the rest of the world. Also bad reporting by Shailaja, who obviously doesn’t have a clue about what it takes to be a journalist.
4:23 AM PT
There is no need to attack the author.We are not in chat room.
7:40 AM PT
It wasn’t old news to me.
And while there is copying of ideas in India, let me point out that it happens everywhere. Europe had 10 rip-offs of eBay. They copy all the leading internet site. So do South American companies and companies in Asia (India included). I’ve met founders who proudly say “We are the of Europe”. So, please, has nothing to do with Indians - has to do with the eagerness of trying to replicate a model that works (sometimes with little success).
To be clear, Europe does have unique sites that aren’t copies of anything and so does India.
7:57 AM PT
well, here’s one copycat that got more financial traction already:
(link)
with - as i understand it, and the site managers’ a neighbor, good old fashioned sales technique.
ahh, well :-)
8:59 AM PT
Does this story even deserve mention on GigaOM ? I am very surprised.
9:11 AM PT
Almost all the stories from India are rehash of news stories appearing in Indian newspapers or magazine, does this really add any value to Gigaom.
9:35 AM PT
Pradeep, same feelings here. - Vijay
10:37 AM PT
It’s only a model a that works when it’s original and gets press, and it’s silly posts like this that make these idiotic ideas work. Stop talking about them, and no one will buy any ad space.
1:41 PM PT
Not everyone on the planet reads the Indian newspapers. You guys might, I don’t. If you do read the Indian newspapers, then feel free to not read and to not comment on these posts. I frankly find them very informative. I love the fact that OM has added an India section — it saves me scouring tons of Indian sites.
I hope he also adds a China section. I am sure at that point, there will be tons of posts that have already been mentioned in the China press, but you guys won’t be bitching and moaning since (if) you don’t follow China so closely.
Om — I vote for continued coverage. I am sure a ton of your US (and other non-Indian) readers are interested in hearing more.
9:02 PM PT
So played out, come on people.
3:37 AM PT
The question here is audience, as Shri says. The NYT picked up India’s Maoist menace story at least two years after the Asian Age and Indian Express and Hindustan Times, when more than a dozen weekend supplements on the topic had appeared in every one of them. The Washington Post followed suit the next week with a story that followed the NYT article nearly word for word. Does this mean that readers in Washington were twice screwed because they could have gone on the web and read it all in the Indian papers years before?
7:01 PM PT
Not original an idea. So, it is an abomination.
2:44 AM PT
Initially thought that its the same copy cat site. But actually if you go and read about the site and the concept, it is much better and sustaining. The concept is to negotiate discounts from the advertisers such that the surfers can also benefit. So whilst the milliondollarhomepage may have created an internet frenzy but had nothing for the surfers, this site ACTUALLY holds something for the surfers and has repeat value. I think its a brilliant extension to the original site and holds a lot of potential for Indian websites and companies. Well done Sunaina!
4:06 AM PT
everything else aside…do people actually go to these sites and click on the ads ??
the owner of the million dollar page may have made his million but whats the benefit that advertisers get ??
just curious…:)
2:19 PM PT
What about this one! Best looking yet?
3:43 PM PT
This is not news, it is a “run of the mill” site. Surprising how it made into a blog like GigaOm.
4:06 AM PT
Here’s another one trying his luck on the idea of Tew: (link)