The final 1,000 pixels on the Million Dollar Homepage sold for $38,100 earlier this week, netting 21 year-old UK student Alex Tew the final amount needed to meet the $1m target.

However, disaster struck early yesterday when the site was knocked off the web for an extended period of time by a DDoS attack.

The Million Dollar Homepage had been online since September last year, and is one of those 'wish I'd thought of that' ideas initially dreamed up by Tew as a way of paying his university expenses.

The idea was simple. Tew launched a website which he promised to keep online for at least five years. He then divided the homepage into a million pixels and sold each pixel for $1 as advertising space.

Many advertisers are understood to have bought pixels as a joke, but the idea soon took off. On the back of a wave of publicity Tew's site was soon receiving 500,000 unique visitors a day, with much of that traffic clicking through to advertisers.

The site's total earnings have actually netted Tew $1,037,100 which has been the catalyst for the appearance of a number of other copycat sites.

Tew may be the newest internet millionaire, but armed with only a basic web hosting package, the extra fees charged for protection against mounting DDoS attacks will soon be eating into his cash pile.