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

Following on from the success of fellow student Alex Tew's www.milliondollarhomepage.com, Russell McGurk has decided to create his own unique website. 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 unknown 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 absolutely anyone can get involved, so it's unique in that sense. I am trying to create a real interactive 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!

Russell goes on to say: "It's very common for companies to spend huge amounts on advertising and increasing awareness in 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, I’m not even selling a product. 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 maintaining the site".

He has various activities planned such as his ‘Task of the Day’ and ‘Experiment of the Week’. Russell 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 don’t know where the money for my next beer is coming from, never mind investing in the internet!"

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