"Unique" online experiment you can join in with

Following on from the success of fellow student Alex Tew's www.milliondollarhomepage.com, Russell McGurk has decided to create his own unique idea. He is carrying out an online experiment in the form of www.TheMediaExperiment.com.

Exactly what is the experiment? "It's an investigation to see how easy or difficult it is to get large amounts of visitors to a new, previously unheard of website, purely through forms of media and internet " says Russell, a 22yr old multimedia student at Nottingham Trent University.

"I'm not aware of any other online experiments in which anyone can get involved so it's unique in that sense. I am trying to create a real communal internet activity

"I don’t believe we've seen anywhere near the full potential of the internet yet, it's a very young technology and I would love to have my own piece of internet history! It won't look bad on my Resume either!

Russells goes on to say: "It's very common for companies to spend huge amounts on advertising their brand or website, I just thought to myself it would be cool if my experiment proves to some extent that it doesn’t always have to be the case, Imagine if I manage to achieve a million hits without spending more than the cost of the web space!"

Russell has set himself an initial target of one million unique visitors and as an extra incentive has offered the chance of a small cash prize for visitors to spread the word about the experiment "Anything that I make from the site will be ploughed straight back into maintaing the site".

He will be having a regular $100 draw every time the site receives 10,000 hits. "The prize draw is just one of many ideas I have to entice traffic to the site, being a student I can only just afford my next meal so I will not be spending anything beyond maintaing the site.

"Any traffic I do get is likely to come via word of mouth, whether it be in the realms of reality or in cyberspace. If the site proves successful I also have a few ideas as the site progresses. Will this "online experiment" prove a successful? Either way the results should be interesting.