Edwin said:
Reread the emails he sent you.
A) All pixels sold were sold legitimately. That's not contradicted by the small reserved block of pixels - since they were never made available for sale, they could not have been sold "illegitimately" thus no contradiction.
B) Alex hasn't placed any affiliate links of his own. There weren't any in the block he reserved for the final auction, so again there's no contradiction.
I've corresponded a few times with Alex, mainly at the very beginning (pre-$50,000) and he strikes me as a friendly, intelligent YOUNG chap who struck on a winning idea and was (very pleasantly) surprised at its popularity.
Beyond that is just sour grapes...
This is the truth. There is a difference between him putting his own links up there, and reserving the prime location for the final sale.
I too have purchased a pixel link from Alex, and you know what, my ad is performing terribly on milliondollarhomepage.com . But, you know what, I got everything I paid for as promised, and my ad was delivered quickly. If my ad is not performing, it is my own fault because it's not in a good location.
Everyone here who is talking about what Alex has done "wrong" fails to realize that Alex has to have done at least one "right" thing, otherwise he wouldn't have a self-made million in his pocket.
His auctioning off of his own pixels may, and I use "may" lightly (since everything he has done so far has been a "right" move), be a shortsighted move, but in no way constitutes fraud.
Furthermore, he never said in his blog that he just now decided to do something special with the last 1,000 pixels. Instead, he mentions that he now decided what the best way to capitalize on them is.
He would be a fool not to have thought about the additional value of the final pixels... but he may only now have decided that ebay was the way to go.
Either way, congrats to him. I am a part of internet history because of him, and it only cost me a measly $100.