Mad props to Baron for breaking this story to me on his blog Million Dollar Avatar - get hits or die tryin'.
I signed up right away and it looks like this site just went live.
There is currently no fee to be a member though they do say they reserve the right to charge for "premium" service at a later date.
If you click on a members avatar you go to their blog. If you click on their name you go to their profile page.
How it works:
In its simplest, MillionDollarAvatar(MDA) works by users clicking on avatar image links or username text links. User can view member profile pages to find out about members, visit their webesite, read their 5 latest blog entries, add comments, see who else visited this profile page, see who else has this member in their favorites search user profiles, search for users by tag, etc.source: the Million Dollar Avatar FAQ
MillionDollarAvatar(MDA) is membership based. That means to have your profile on MDA you need to register and pay the $10 membership fee (Read more about membership benefits). Once MDA has 100 or more members, the homepage will then randomly select 100 members each day of the week to display on the homepage (note: Until we have 100 members, the homepage will display each member in chronological order based on membership created date).
The backpage is where you can find 100 randomly selected members who have created a membership account within the last 7 days. The backpage is regenerated every 5 minutes, which means a greater chance to get your avatar seen and to find new members.
MDA also produces "The Daily 20" which is a random selection of 20 members each day. We post these 20 members each day on our blog. The goal for the The Daily 20 is to provide subscription access to these daily 20 sites via RSS readers and email - so think of it as just another way to get your site publicized or an easy way to find out about 20 new sites each day. Users can also search user profiles or search by tag. Searching by tag (aka category) is a great way to find communities of users who categorize themselves in the same manner.
I'm very curious to see how well this catches on. Why not take a minute and register?