It seems that with the explosion of the Internet, new business opportunities are constantly being discovered by entrepreneurs. As most Chinese use Weibo, China's Twitter-like site, as their primary source of information, as well as a place to air personal opinions, one user, Zhang Jianwei, has found a way to capitalize on the steady stream of fans of his Sina Weibo page.

Inspired by Briton Alex Tew's Million Dollar Homepage model, Zhang divided the two sidebars of his Sina Weibo page into 10,000 blocks, each block measuring 20 by 22 pixels and selling for 20 yuan ($3.14) per year. Advertisers can buy any number of blocks depending on their needs and advertise for any sort of item. His clients cover everything from mobile phone companies, to law firms, to real estate brokers, and some netizens even post advertisements to promote their own Weibo pages.

Online fame pays off

Zhang, a mobile client product manager in Beijing, was born in the early 1980s in Inner Mongolia. He is better known by his online name, Tiancai Xiaoxiongmao (talented little panda), due to his popular series of online gif (graphics interchange format) animations called Youxiajiao de Zhanzheng posted in October 2010.

Youxiajiao de Zhanzheng, which means the battle in the bottom-right corner, is a satire inspired by the disputes between Tencent QQ, China's most popular instant messaging site, and Qihoo 360, a leading online security software developer in China, that same year. By using the latest Internet lingo to create dialogues between icons on the computer screen, Zhang portrayed netizens' dissatisfaction with the software companies, winning him instant support from fellow Web users in China.

Due to this series, the number of fans of Zhang's Weibo jumped from 200 to 10,000. An image he posted recently brought the number to 120,000 fans.

Zhang believes that without his large number of fans, his advertising scheme would not have met with much success. Without his many fans, he told the Global Times, few advertisers would have found reason to purchase blocks.

Birth of an idea

Despite the obvious benefits of selling advertising space on his Weibo page, Zhang said it hadn't been a long-term plan.

"One night when I couldn't fall asleep, it just hit me," he said, adding that he wasn't motivated by the money, but simply thought it would be fun. On the first day his advertising blocks went live, he gave the space to a few friends.

Zhang's first paying customer purchased six blocks of space to express his support for a female singer. In the roughly two months since he came up with the idea in June, Zhang has sold over 600 blocks, taking in over 10,000 yuan. His biggest customer owns 100 blocks of space.

"The price is affordable for almost anyone. Even if it does not bring many new customers to the advertisers, it is not a big expense," Zhang told the Global Times.

In Zhang's opinion, people are interested in his model because it's new to them. But if it starts a trend, it will lose its edge. He also said that it's his responsibility to keep the content interesting if he is to expect continued interest from advertisers.

So far, the spaces on the first screen of Zhang's page are almost sold out, and he is beginning to develop a method to attract advertisers for the rest of the blocks.  

"Usually, a visitor will only look at the first screen, because the latest information is there," Zhang said. "Therefore, the lower space is of little value to advertisers."

A matter of ownership

Zhang's high-profile move to sell advertising space has prompted a discussion over who actually owns Weibo pages.

Zhang's supporters assert that since he registered for a personal account on Sina Weibo, its content is his business alone.

"The large number of fans is Zhang's own resource, just like a person who has a lot of friends in different fields," said Qiu Lan, an office worker in Beijing who uses Weibo. "If people in society can rely on their friends to boost business, why can't a Weibo user rely on his fans?"

The opposing argument points out that Sina Weibo provides the pages for users, claiming that Zhang is only doing business in another's territory.

According to a July 22 report by Wuhan-base Changjiang Daily, Sina faced a similar issue in 2006 when blogs first became popular in China. The report said that when an advertiser wished to buy space on famous actress Xu Jinglei's blog, Chen Tong, editor-in-chief of Sina, argued that because the company provided the service for users, it owned the rights to any advertising deals. Though Xu had told the advertiser to contact her agent directly, no space was sold, and she and Sina never reached an agreement

Sina's approach to Zhang's case is very different. Mao Taotao, the company's PR manager, told the Global Times that they currently do not want to give any comment on the matter.

In the midst of all the chatter, Zhang does not seem to be worried about the issue of ownership.

"No one from Sina has contacted me on the matter. Furthermore, the model can't be easily replicated, so it won't bring much loss to the company," he said.

Zhou Bin, a lawyer specializing in Internet property rights, told Shanghai-based eastday.com that the question of ownership here is in fact a legal gray area. According to Zhou, when the current advertisement laws were last revised, websites had not been taken into consideration.

"If we put aside the question of whether individuals are allowed to sell advertisements themselves, since Weibo allows users to edit their own page backgrounds, using advertisements as the background is within the agreement between Sina and its users," Zhou said. "As long as there is no illegal content in the ads, there is currently no reason that advertising revenue wouldn't belong to the user."