1000000
pixels, charge a dollar per pixel – that’s perhaps the dumbest idea for
online business anyone could have possible come up with. Still, Alex
Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire.
2. SantaMail
Ok, how’s that for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska,
pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every
letter you send to their kids? Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000
letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a
couple 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.
You
can’t sell antenna ball 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
now a millionaire.
6. FitDeck
Create
a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for
$18.95. Sounds like a disaster idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and
fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million.
Surely beats what military pays.
How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin
thought that someone would, so they created a dating site for HIV
positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two
hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.
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 new exceed half a million dollars.
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, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.
11. To see other businesses that have not made the top 10 list but came pretty close, visit Uncommon Business Blog
P.S. You might want to read these books about unusual business ideas as well
