How is any idea, that makes money, stupid? It's arguably the best metric for judging an idea/execution.
10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
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Re: 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
#22An old principle here perhaps: evolution does not mean making an organism more complex or "better" necessarily, only "more adapted", so sometimes more complex organisms can become less complex organisms, such as cave fish losing their ability to see. Similarly, perhaps with memes. Better adapted memes mean just that, better adapted, even if they are completely insane from one way of looking at things. So if the meme of say plastic wishbones mentioned in this article is adapted for some crazy reason, it will find a niche. This is the dark side of evolution. Sometimes organisms lose features and complexity for the sake of adaptation, and perhaps there is a memetic corollary here to, sometimes in the free market the most adapated memes are some of the most insane or revolting, from an aesthetic standpoint. Which just proves the "selfish gene/meme" paradigm - if they can get copied, they will, and they don't care about whatever pain or suffering or cultural decline that may occur as a result.
Re: 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
There will probably never be another million dollar homepage... In twenty years or so it might be possible to build another million-dollar homepage, just as it's been possible to revive fads from the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s twenty years later. (The 1990s nostalgia is due any minute now.) Twenty years from now there will be a large population of web users who have never heard of the original million-dollar hom…
Some fads can be revived... but the real success of the million dollar homepage was convincing companies to buy ad space, not attracting people to the site. Sure many web users will not have heard of the site (I would venture to say web users of today have not heard of it) but the people spending the ad dollars are (presumably) a more knowledgeable group. That is the group the next million dollar homepage has to cour…
I'm glad you took the trouble to argue with yourself, because now I can ROTFL at your third paragraph with you instead of at you. ;)
Believe me, advertisers are human and they will forget every bit as quickly as everyone else does.
Re: 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
#24These things are not "stupid" ideas. They defy intuition to be sure (selling plastic wishbones online, who would of thought?) but most of the ideas simply exploited hidden market niches, which is actually smart. There is one exception: million dollar homepage. That site was launched at just the right time and it was the first of its kind. People were willing to take a chance on it for those two reasons. There will pr…
There will probably never be another million dollar homepage... In twenty years or so it might be possible to build another million-dollar homepage, just as it's been possible to revive fads from the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s twenty years later. (The 1990s nostalgia is due any minute now.) Twenty years from now there will be a large population of web users who have never heard of the original million-dollar hom…
I think another million dollar homepage will happen much sooner than that. I know someone that did something similar and made a quick 15k:
http://www.linkexperiment.com/
Re: 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
#25The SantaMail is in the funny one to me. In Canada, if you mail a letter to Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0 then Canada Post employee volunteers send you a response in the guise of Santa. And the only cost to you is stationary and a stamp.
Re: 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
#26"Designer Diaper Bags" is not a stupid idea. Christie Rein was going through a problem, she solved it and started selling the solution