Is An Idea That Nets A Million A Crazy Idea?
My friend Dimitri Davydov at Nichegeek has written several times in the past few months on what would ordinarily be considered absolutely crazy ideas by many of us. especially those of us close to retirement age who have a lifetime experience of "knowing’ what won’t work.
I talk a lot here about using your experience to make money, among other reasons, to empower your retirement. Our overall life experience is often a very useful asset. But use caution. make sure your "lifetime of knowing what works" doesn’t lead you to throw away ideas that could be gangbuster money makers.
A couple recent examples I have always liked … chosen strictly by my eclectic tastes with the criteria that the idea not involve large, high risk investments.
- The million dollar homepage Create a page with a 1,000,000 pixels, and charge a dollar per pixel to advertise.
This is ‘old news" … or is it? A nice young fellow name of Alex Tew wanted to go to university and wasn’t sure he would have money for the education he wanted. he could have gotten a job at Burger King or Borders … the typical kind of advice he’s get from "experts" … and after say a whole summer’s work he would probably have enough savings to pay his book store expenses for the first semester. Were he an American, he could also put himself under the tender mercies of the college loan system … a handy conspiracy between banks and the US government to try to enslave anyone who wants an education for 15 or 20 years *(if you don’t have huge student loans, and especially if you don’t have a home mortgage, like me, you are probably on one or more potential un-American terrorists lists. Rather than save money, the major country’s governments want their citizens in debt, for life if practical. My view? Bullshit.
Alex put up a simple web site with essentially one page … blank to start … actually, divided up in tiny squares, each square containing 100 (10 x 10)of the one million pixels that make up this screen you are reading now, as well as every other page you read on your monitor screen. I don’t know his actual out of pocket expense, but you can set up something like this for a few hundred dollars … and you really don’t need that much until you start to get traffic and need actual programming skills and a faster server.
Now seriously, how many things can you even make a site about a million of … aside from pixels? Well, quite a few things actually, but rather than argue that point, what about sites with the top 100,000, 10,000, the top 100 web designers in the US plotted on a Google Map, etc., etc. Alex made more than $1,000,000 but you don’t have to make a million to make a very worthwhile profit. The main thing you need? An imagination and a few days of suppressing the thoughts of "it can’t be done". believe me, I read dozens and dozens of ‘web experts’ when Alex was starting out who expounded on reason after reason why it was silly and that he was doomed to fail.
- Looking for a doctor’s note to get out of taking that big test? Want to claim a sick day at work?
Now that seems really silly! grown men putting up a web site and making use of the service to write phony doctor’s notes, funeral programs and other sorts of silly excuse forms. Not only silly, but dishonest and in poor taste and against the 10 Commandments and …. go ahead, fill in your own adjectives.
All these words and more may be true, but the founders of The Excused Absence Network have already made their million and they haven’t stopped yet. After how many years of work around the fringes of school rules, laws and corporate regulations, do you know any "slick" methods for getting through the rules thicket? Betcha you you you you you you do. And I betcha you you you you you you there are thousands of other people who would like to know how too. If you look this site over you will see there is hardly anything super sophisticated in anything that they do. Certainly didn’t lay out any 5-figure investment to set up this money maker.
Want something along the same lines but a little more technical? For years I worked under the CSRS rules of the US government civil service. We were entitled to sick leave. We also got to apply unused sick leave to our time in service when retirement rolled around. At some point in time the use of sick leave over a certain amount would cut into the retirement annuity. But sick leave credits of less than a month’s worth are just thrown away at retirement. And different categories of folks earned and get charged sick leave at different rates. How much sick leave can you afford to take in your last year or so of service to maximize your retirement pay and yet give none back? Easy enough for someone who knows the rules … and easy enough to charge people in that position a reasonable amount for a an analysis of their position and recommended "leave taking" schedules. And you thought you had no real technical knowledge?
Bottom line? All it takes to make money is an idea and the guts to implement it. there are no truly "silly" ideas except the ones that you don’t try because "experts" told you they were silly. You be the judge … or let your bank account be the real arbitrator.
Related posts:
- An Off-line Retirement Empowerment Idea
- Can You Believe This Blog Is Worth $5 Million Dollars?
- Values often Neglected - Part 2, Sick Leave
- Press 1 For a Good Idea, Press 2 To Stay On Hold
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