Dollar Cost Advertising
By Jeff Hilimire on Friday, March 16th, 2007
Just had to share this. We’ve all had dollar bills before that had writing on them, usually someone’s phone number or something. I had a dollar yesterday that had an ad on it pointing me to the website where I can track where my dollar has traveled lately. The site is called WheresGeorge.com. It worked on me, though I’m wondering exactly how legal this is.
And because you’re dying to know, according to the site my dollar has traveled 204 miles in 251 days with an average of .81 miles per day, starting in Turtletown, TN. I was bummed out to find that the site doesn’t allow your dollar to rank its speed vs. other dollars. Or maybe I’m just looking for some new kind of competition since my NCAA pool is already lost after day 1.
I have spent the day contemplating this concept. So, I took a few minutes to look over the site and was surprised to see just how thorough it is. There are public forums (divided by region, even) where people post about their money travels - hundreds of posts. And the forum is only one small element of the site. Amazing.
Actually, this site has been around for ages. I remember first hearing about it back in the late 90’s, when it was a much less dynamic interface, but the concept was still there… and that kept people coming back. It’s good to see it’s still around - a cool community site, and sort of educational, too. Do you think it’s supported by volunteer labor and the ads pay for the bandwidth costs? It’s hard to imagine it as a viable business model… though they do have some merchandising and a “friends of george” donation area.