Selling the Invisible
Another trait that I noticed with milliondollarhomepage.com (MDHP) and also chrisandluke.com (CL), thefirst corporately sponsored college students, is that they sold the invisibe. MDHP sold ads without an audience and CL sold announce corporate sponsors without having them (see press release at http://www.chrisandluke.com/press.html).
What is true with both of these is that the first people to buy in have the most to gain. For MDHP, they get their pick of space and ad size. For CL, the sponsor gets tons of PR.