Here is proof that sometimes, all it takes is one great idea to set you up for life….or at least make you a ton of money very quickly. The following will probably frustrate the hell out of you like they do me, but they also serve as great motivation to always think creatively and explore unique ideas.
1. Saving a Bunny
The site’s proprietor (”James Mceahly”) claims that he found Toby wounded outside his home and has since nursed the rabbit back to health. According to the website, he claimed that, if US$50,000 is not donated to him (the owner) through his website, he would have Toby killed and prepared as a meal. The website raised money through donations and “Save Toby” merchandise. The original deadline was June 30th 2005, but when that deadline passed, the deadline was extended to November 6th, 2006. At that time, the proprietor changed the demand to 100,000 copies of his forthcoming “Save Toby” book.The owner of bored.com has bought the website and Toby has been saved.
The website has reported over $28,000 USD in donations as of 27 June 2005.
**Urban legend website Snopes.com indicates that the website is a hoax. According to Snopes.com, this is a fixed graphic that is changed periodically to make it appear that people are actually donating money. This would appear to be the case, since clicking on the “donate” button reveals that the “Save Toby” account can not receive money since PayPal froze it. The link could also be updated to reflect merchandise sales but this has yet to be fully clarified.
SaveToby.com has since been bought by Bored.com for an undisclosed amount. Hoax or not, SaveToby.com probably made a heap of money with one simple (and yes, probably unethical) idea.
2. MillionDollarhomepage nets 1,000,000+
The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived by Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from Cricklade, Wiltshire, England to help raise money for his university education. Launched on August 26, 2005, the website is said to have generated a gross income of $1,037,100 USD and has a current Google PageRank of 7. The site’s Alexa ranking is 29,594, having peaked at around 127.
The index page of the site consists of a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid (one million pixels), on which he sells image-based links for US $1 per pixel, in minimum ten by ten blocks. A person who buys one or more of these pixelblocks can design a tiny image which will be displayed on them, and also decide a URL which he or she wants them to link to, as well as a slogan displayed when hovering the cursor over the link. The aim of the site was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating one million dollars of income for the creator, which seems to have been accomplished.
On January 1, 2006, the final 1,000 pixels left were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on January 11 with the winning bid of $38,100.00. This brought the final tally to $1,037,100 USD in gross income. Alex Tew has a new project that could be just as successful called pixelotto.com
3. Facebook Financial Boon – Top Friends Application
The most exciting part about Facebook opening itself up to developers recently is the incredible potential for instant viral spread. If your ideas are good enough, built in Facebook features such as “share with friends,” “news feeds,” groups, mass messaging, and more will make sure it gets out there far and wide, even with the most meager of marketing efforts. The most popular facebook application “Top Friends” launched a few weeks ago and now has over 7 million users. It recently sold for over $60,000, less than a month after its creation and launch. You can read more about this here.
4. Santamail.org
Now this is a beautiful idea. Simple, original, and universal. “Byron Reese Started his company, SantaMail.org, which sells fully personalized letters from Santa Claus all across North America (they’re even postmarked from North Pole, Alaska, to give them an authentic feeling). Reese sold 10,000 letters in 2001, his first year in business. Though holiday sales have increased every subsequent year, he still looked for ways to expand his offering. Now, parents can order birthday cards for their children from Santa as well. The strategy pushed 2005 sales to $1 million.” -source
5. Rocky Mosel and the Star Registry
How is this for a genius scam; Selling you a certificate that says you have “named a star” when in reality, no company except the International Astronomical Union can officially name a star. Robert Naeye, editor of Mercury Magazine, a publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, puts it in no uncertain terms: “The star names sold by the International Star Registry are not recognized by any professional astronomical organization.” Here is a great article for more information about the International Star Registry: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/12/49345
6. The Incredible Opportunity….. That almost everyone missed.
Domain Name Buying in the early 90’s. Those with the forethought are now all millionaires for almost no effort. Take for example Kevin Ham, one of a handful of major-league “domainers” in the world and arguably the shrewdest and most ambitious of the lot. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue.
7. 1000Tags.com
As the title suggests, there are 1000 tags for sale, and the price changes based on if it’s exclusive and how big or colorful you make the tag display you buy. A similar idea to the Milliondollarhomepage. There are two types of tags you can buy:
Exclusive tags are tags that once booked, nobody else can use them. The tag must have not been booked before, of course. Also, when someone books an exclusive tag, the user booking it decides the size (weight) of the tag: the bigger the font size, the more it costs. Once 50 exclusive tags have been booked, no more will be allowed.
Shared tags When someone clicks on a shared tag, a list of the sites that booked that tag will be presented in no particular order. The beauty of shared tags is that, just like regular tag clouds, the more people book them, the more weight (font size) they will have in the tag cloud. So if you happen to book a heavily booked tag, your site will appear in a longer list of sites, but your tag will also be much more visible in the tag cloud.
8. The Red Paper Clip.
If you have never heard this one, it is a really interesting concept. Kyle MacDonald traded up from a red paperclip to a farmhouse in only 14 Trades. You can read the full story here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/07/07/paperclip-house.html. Now it looks like he is really cashing in with a book. You can see his trades below.
