Can One Website Make $1,000,000 Before 2028? I’m Finding Out in Public

Here's the question this whole website exists to answer: can one small website, built and run by one person, earn $1,000,000 before 1 January 2028?

No investors. No team. No advertising budget. Just a domain called MillionDollarJoke.com, a stack of free games people can play with friends anywhere in the world, and a public tracker showing every dollar the site earns.

The name is honest. It probably won't work. That's what makes it fun to watch.

The maths is terrifying

From today there are roughly 420 days left until the deadline. To hit a million, the site needs to earn about $2,400 every single day. Including weekends. Including the day after New Year's when nobody does anything.

For comparison, a brand-new website usually earns a few cents a day from ads. So the gap between "a few cents" and "$2,400" is, let's say, ambitious.

Here's what it would take, roughly:

• Hundreds of thousands of people playing the games every day
• A few brands willing to sponsor a game or a leaderboard
• T-shirts and merch that people actually want to wear
• The odd kind stranger leaving a tip because the site made their evening

Where the money comes from

No donations campaign, no "invest in me", no crypto, nothing to buy before you can play. The site earns the same way any website does:

• Ads. Small ads between sections and articles. Every visit helps a tiny bit.
• Sponsors. A brand can sponsor a game, a daily challenge or a party pack.
• Store. Merch for people who want to wear the joke.
• Tips. Completely optional. Tips never buy points, ranks or any advantage in the games.

Every month I update the tracker on the homepage with the real total and exactly which of those four it came from. Good months and embarrassing ones.

Why bother?

Because I genuinely want to know the answer. The internet is full of people promising you'll make a million by following their system. I'd rather do the opposite: try it in the open, show the actual numbers, and let everyone watch whether it works.

And even if the tracker ends at $87, the games will still be here, and the people who played them will have had a good time. That's not a bad consolation prize.

How you can play along

The most useful thing you can do costs nothing: play, and bring friends.

• Daily Challenge: five questions, same for the whole world, new every day. Share your score and help your country win the daily country battle.
• Trivia Showdown: pick any of 194 countries and see how well you really know it, solo or against friends.
• Who's Most Likely To: the party game, with family-friendly and grown-up packs.
• Ludo and Draughts: play online with a friend using a room code.

Every game earns Hype Points that put your name on the global leaderboard. They're free, they can't be bought, and they're worth absolutely nothing except bragging rights, which, honestly, is the best currency there is.

Follow the experiment

I'll post monthly updates here: traffic, earnings, what worked, what flopped, and what I'm trying next. If you have an idea that could help, or you're a brand that wants to sponsor something silly and fun, get in touch through the Contact page.

The clock on the homepage is already counting down. Let's see how far a joke can go.