1. How does this work?
2. Why is this better than selling pixels?
3. Is this idea original?
4. The time of the ad on the front page isn't the current GMT, why?
5. I count 7 images on the main page, I thought there was only supposed to be one image?
6. How much is one minute worth?
7. What's that grid thing near the bottom of the front page?
8. Is there a limit to how big my image should be?
9. Will you mess with my image?
10. When is the best time to choose for my minute(s)?
11. How many weeks will my ad be up for?
12. Are you worried about people copying this idea of selling minutes?

Got a question not listed here? Contact me.

This site is the next evolution in the pixel selling idea invented by Alex Tew on milliondollarhomepage.com. If you visit that site you see that advertisers pay $100 to place a 10 by 10 pixel image on a grid of ten thousand blocks. Do the maths and you'll work out that in total there's $1 million of advertising place for sale. As it's an original idea, people flock to the site and a proportion then will click on one of the mini adverts and be siphoned off to that advertiser's website.

Now I think this is a great idea but there's clearly room for improvement. On pixel selling sites (and there are now loads of them, many straight copies of the original) a 10x10 block has, all things being equal, a 1 in 10000 chance of getting clicked on. This is not high but once you consider the sheer number of visitors that'll come along (literally millions) it means that that square's going to get a lot of clicks! Nimisis minutes adds the extra dimension of time to compensate for the size of the ad. So what's new here is that, with there being 10080 minutes in a week (=7x24x60, just over 10000) I can give an advertiser a decent size image to display on the homepage, but only for one minute in the week (actually more while there are unreserved minutes. See below, question 4.)

It's pretty hard to encapsulate whatever it is you're selling in just a 10 by 10 pixel square! I believe that this would be more effective as people are then visiting your site coming from the angle of "oh, that looks interesting, I might buy that product or service" instead of "what is this little icon thing, let's click on it and see where it takes me!"

Adding the time dimension is completely original, but, credit where it's due, I probably would never have done this had I not seen the success of MillionDollarHomepage.com.

When the current minute does not have an owner, a random minute is chosen to take its place. This is an incentive to act quickly as the first buyer will only have to buy one minute to have their image displayed constantly throughout the week (at least until the second buyer buys a minute, who'll then have half the overall exposure time).

There is one main image, right slap bang in the middle. Then there are 6 smaller images showing the ads up to 3 mins before and 3 mins after the current minute. This is for added exposure. You effectively get at least 7 minutes of exposure in the week. The more appealing your image, the more likely you can lynch some visitors from a poorly designed advert.

$10 = absolute bargain, so buy a minute now.

The grid is made up of blocks that each represent one hour in the week. Sunday's hours are on the top row, down through Monday and Tuesday etc till Saturday on the bottom row. The early hours are on the left and go through to the late hours on the right. Hour blocks can be clicked on to see which minutes have been taken in that hour. The colour of the blocks change with how many minutes are still available in that block's hour. See the legend at the bottom of the page.

(I thought of an idea that someone might be interested in which is to buy a minute in specific blocks such that a message is seen on the grid. It has to be something short though like "digg.com" and bear in mind that eventually the other blocks will change colour and blank out the message.)

Yes, make it 500 pixel wide by 400 pixel high and less than 30kb please.

If you mean change it, no. Nor will I "mess" with it anyway... It will be as you sent it to me.

Probably the evenings. But its always the evening somewhere in the world so bear that in mind because the time on the front page is GMT, so evening in, say, China is lunchtime GMT for example.

The plan is to keep this website running indefinitely, but at least 5 years at least.

Not at all. Go for it! This site is harder to copy than a pixel site though. If you do start something up that's similar, I'd appreciate a link back on your website crediting me though. Thanks.