Saddled with an overdraft and facing three years at university, Alex Tew needed an idea to pay off his student debt. Four weeks ago the 21-year-old launched a website, milliondollarhomepage.com, from his home in Crickley, Wiltshire. It has already netted him more than £56,000.

Tew's website provides advertising space to companies from around the globe. Customers can purchase one or more of the 10,000 tiny boxes that appear on the site's homepage. The boxes host the company's logo and serve as a portal through to the firm's official site. Each box contains 100 pixels and retails at $100.

Its success took everyone by surprise. Milliondollarhomepage hosts more than 300 advertisements and averages 40,000 visits a day. Internet tracker Alexa.com has rated it the world's third fastest-growing website, behind britneyspears.com and the news site pdnonline.com.

"Alex has always come up with lots of ideas," said his father, Malcolm. "He's a brainstormer, and an entrepreneur by nature. He was overdrawn so he sat up late with a notepad one night going through a list of possible solutions. This was the one he came up with."

The companies on the virtual hoarding are a diverse and eclectic bunch. Milliondollarhomepage plays host to gambling sites and anti-war blogs, Dutch sailing companies and an A-Z of supermodels. At one stage Hollywood actor Jack Black took out space to plug his band, Tenacious D.

That said, the site is not open to everyone. "We say no to all the adult sites."

Tew's ultimate aim is for the website to make him a millionaire. In the meantime, he has more pressing concerns. On Monday he starts a course in business management at Nottingham University.