I will start with this one. "Pet Rock" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock Dahl's biggest expense was the die-cutting and manufacture of the boxes. The rocks only cost a penny a piece, and the straw was nearly free. For the initial run of booklets, Dahl had a printing job for a client and "tacked" the pet rock booklet onto the main job. This resulted in a batch requiring only a cut and trim, at almost no cost except some labor He sold a shit load for 3.95 making him a Millionaire. Guy deserves the Nobel Prize of Business ideas. Only in America can you pick up rocks from the street and sell them to folks for almost 4 bucks.
posted this before seeing that thread - http://retail.sillybrandzglobal.com/catalog/silly-bandz little colorful rubber bands that one wears on their wrist. they are all a different shape when taken off. kids have dozens of these, you wear them, trade them, play with them. new models can always come out depending on what's popular. after seeing the popularity that the livestrong bracelets and such have displayed, it's no doubt that these will a smashing hit. kudos to whoever thought of this and actually went through with the idea. you will be very rich very soon. - I am completely enamored by these, the pet rock is pretty incredible too
Yeah, except I had a pet rock. Sure, it was a no-name brand, found riverstone......it didn't take long for the allure to wear off. "Wait a minute-this is just a rock!!". I still cannot believe my parents thought this was a good idea. Still, at least they didn't pay for it. And I must admit, ownership costs are about spot on for a little kid with no income....... How about the guy who recently died riding an off road Segeway scooter? His company made metal grate portable, fillable walls. Just so happened , they work great for defense against rpg, small arm fire-how much did Ratheon order? Guy was loaded, by "default", because he got "lucky". Or, not, as his untimely demise on a segway scooter will attest. Great business ideas are not all about invention, but many are....the windscreen wiper, the disposable razor , Tupperware..wow. Edwin Tupper was a damn genius. Of course, "lending money" for interest has to be right at the top...........
Its said that even diamonds really aren't all that rare and their value was all the bullshit DeBeers was able to put behind them. Take modern art ...bullshit. Some artist whose thing is to wear his pajamas everywhere who made among other things, a shark imbedded in plastic ; that fetched tens of millions ...more bullshit. Andy Warhol ...bullshit. Funny, real estate is depreciating and its about as substantive a thing as ever existed. We're thru the looking glass. Oh, and Glenn Beck and televangelists have people listening to them ...bullshit ...Absurdity Vertigo.
soft drinks. take water that is basically free, add flavoring and sell it at a high price to the masses.
#1 is the guy who first thought of every time you're gonna wipe your ass you're gonna pay 1c for it...
Prostitution The city of Dayton, Ohio owes its existence to prostitution.It existed downtown on Main Street just south of 2nd Street until early 1900s..I think there might be a lot more cities that owe their existence to prostitution.
...under disambiguation of "Hamburger" is this guy. http://exiledonline.com/peter-greenaway’s-master-class/
A guy who puts an ad in the paper that says "Make $1,000 per week stuffing envelopes" and requires a $35 fee to tell you how to do it, then writes back that you should put an ad in the paper that says "Make $1,000 per week stuffing envelopes" and charge a $35 fee to people to tell them how to do it. Or another one where a guy sells a book about making money which just tells you to write and sell a book about making money. Also the gas station across the street from me charges 50 cents for air. Speaking of charging for air...Oxygen bars are another one. I think they charge like 10 dollars for 15 minutes of breathing scented air.
NEW YORK - If there's one thing everyone will remember from the closing days of Operating Iraqi Freedom, there's a good chance it will be a deck of cards. Some 200 decks of cards featuring Iraq's most wanted on the playing faces were printed by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and distributed to troops at Iraqi border crossings. A deck was shown on TV screens around the world during an April 11 CENTCOM briefing in Qatar by Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, and news reports on every capture of a member of the former Iraqi government has included mention of that person's place in the deck. ----------------- When the deck started getting international media attention, the site's founder Louis Amoroso contacted Liberty Playing Cards, a playing-card publisher, with the intention of selling 500 decks per day, says Ken Gaebler, a spokesman for GreatUSAflags.com. ------------ The site took orders for 25,000 decks the first day, and has since tallied orders for more than 700,000, at $5.95 each for more than $4 million in sales. Liberty didn't have the capacity to meet that kind of demand, so Amoroso went looking for another printer. ----------------- http://www.forbes.com/2003/04/25/cx_ah_0425cards.html I couldn't find the stats on email sales of the playing cards. Some guy spammed million and millions of e mails with offers. Phenominal number with something like a .000001 results of sales and still made millions.