The world up for grabs with World Rental Website

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 11, 2006

The world up for grabs with World Rental Website

Want to take over the French Riviera? Have Palm Beach all to yourself? Or save the Amazon rainforests from being plundered? With the launch of the World Rental Website on Saturday July 15, you'll be able to rent any part of the world for a bargain price, albeit only in the virtual world of the Internet.

On the World Rental Website, at www.worldrentalwebsite.com, the world is divided into nine maps, and the land area on each map can be rented by the pixel to display an advertising image linking to the tenant's website. Mark Matuschka, creator of the World Rental Website and the originator of the idea, says that in addition to the direct referrals received, advertisers' sites should also receive a boost in rankings on Internet search engines.

"Every webmaster wants their website to appear in the first page of search results on Google," Matuschka says. "No-one can guarantee a top ten listing, but I do expect my tenants' rankings to improve by being listed on my maps."

Search engine ranking depends largely on the number and quality of "backlinks" - links to a site from other sites. If your site is linked to by www.microsoft.com, for example, your search engine ranking is likely to skyrocket.

Mr Matuschka was motivated to create the site to help fund his life-long ambition - to study music composition at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney and become a film composer. He is also donating half the income to World Vision to sponsor children in need.

Pixel advertising was made popular in 2005 by Alex Tew, creator of the Million Dollar Homepage, who sold one million pixels for $US1 each, creating an amazing looking square collage in the process. The World Rental Website extends that idea to geographic locations. The resulting map-shaped collages are expected to change over time as tenants and their advertising images change.

The maps will be released in stages, with Oceania, including New Zealand, Australia and other pacific nations, becoming available at 12 noon on Saturday, followed by North America four weeks later and the other regions in following months.

Prices vary between maps, with Oceania showing value at 25 US cents per pixel for a year's rental. A typical 100 pixel block will lease for $US25 in New Zealand, compared to $US300 in Europe when "land" is released there on October 7. The prices have been determined by the combined GDP of all countries on the map and the number of pixels available, making the advertising affordable by people everywhere.

ENDS

Background information: Mark Matuschka is the founder of Caign Group Pty Ltd, which he established as an Information Technology consultancy business in 1994. He currently devotes most of his time to the company's web development arm, Caign Webs.

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