from here
The Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big
1. Million Dollar Homepage
Take out a page with a 1,000,000 pixels. Charge a dollar per pixel. That’s perhaps the dumbest idea for an online business anyone could have possibly come up with. Still, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire. Check out the original page. Because of the success of this endeavor, the expected copycats have popped out of the woodwork.
2. SantaMail
Ok, how’s this for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address in the North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids. Well, Byron Reese has sent over 200,000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a couple of million dollars richer.
3. Doggles
Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a business. How in the world did they manage to become millionaires and have shops all over the world with that one? Beyond me.
4. LaserMonks
LaserMonks.com is a for-profit subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges. Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were $2.5 million! Praise the Lord.
5. AntennaBalls
You can’t sell antenna balls online. There is no way. And surely it wouldn’t make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason Wall did, and now he is a millionaire.
6. FitDeck
Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. Sounds like a disastrous idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and fitness instructor Phil Black reported 2005 sales of $4.7 million. Surely beats what the military pays.
7. PositivesDating.Com
Disclaimer: I don’t exactly think this is a dumb idea, in fact I think it’s probably a good one, the premise being a matchmaking site for HIV positive people. At any rate, it’s a very well-meaning service which is mentioned as part of the original list I stumbled upon.
How about a dating service for HIV positive people? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin has filled a niche by creating a dating site for HIV positive folks in 2005. Projected 2006 sales were $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.8. Designer Diaper Bags
Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that’s big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie’s company, Diapees & Wipees, has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.
9. TruGamerz
Faux-suede padded covers for game controllers and gel thumb pads for analog joysticks? No one will buy that. Forget it. The product proved to be so popular, it got picked up by Target.com and Walmart.com and annual sales now exceed half a million dollars.
10. Lucky Wishbone Co.
Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out. Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, pegged 2006 sales to reach $1 million.
But the reality is that most dumb ideas don’t get traction and are quickly shelved because they couldn’t get funding.
10 Dumb Business Ideas Pitched to Venture Capitalists
That didn’t get anywhere….
- Side-ejecting ejection seats
What the heck is this?- A Google of graveyard registries
- An in-flight magazine detailing all the noises heard during air travel, with explanations for each buzz, rattle and click
- A site for used pet toys: eBay crossed with Pets.com
Wait a sec. What ever happened to that Pets.com sock puppet?
- An electronic thoroughbred horse to teach people how to become jockeys or just learn how to ride race horses for fun. I’m guessing it’s similar to a mechanical bull.
- Lifelike robot doll that would talk and interact with others
A shame it never saw the light of day. Sounds like it would have been the best toy robot we’d ever come across. But they’re doing stuff like this in Japan already. But we’re talking androids here, not dolls! I actually went to school with this guy who’s an expert in this field.
- All about ME!
An entrepreneur wanted $10 million to fund a movie and a book about himself. Well he could just start a blog….
- How about $30 million for an original animated film?
Are you Pixar? Then yes.- Talking sneakers
- An airline with WiFi on every plane
So some ideas took off and some floundered.
But no worries, entrepreneurs still keep trying…and creating….and inventing… Perhaps by just taking matters into their own hands and striking it out on their own with their own capital and elbow grease, they may still make it anyway! Dumb ideas have made money before, as we have just learned, so who knows — sometimes, it’s a surprise what clicks with the multitude out there.
If they can do it, so can I.
If I ever come up with an outrageous concept, I may give it a second thought and not just toss it asunder. What’s ridiculous to you may actually fly with some people and have a viable market somewhere. So if I were to pursue such a crazy thought (and yes, I’ll know if it sounds stupid…), I’ll first make sure it requires the lowest effort, risk and minimal investment so I won’t feel bad if it flops.
If anyone out there has had a weird idea that made it big… or not, how about sharing?
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น