You can sell anything. Just do it.
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This is the final article in a series on securing your finances by adding new income streams. If you haven’t yet read the previous parts yet, check out the first, second, third and fourth parts as well.
I know.
Who would buy such stupid things?
Until 2005 if you would have asked me I would have said that no way could someone make a million dollars selling pixels to advertisers. But Alex Tew, a 21 student from a small town somewhere in England, did just that.
I had long forgotten all about the Million Dollar Homepage until 10 days ago I read about the Million Dollar Wiki project at JohnChow.com.
This project is really similar to the original million dollar project by Alex Tew: Again, a young guy (his name is Graham Langdon) needs to pay for his college debts so he decides that he’s going to make a million dollars. By selling pages on his wiki page. I would never have thought that anyone would pay $100 for a wiki page, but Graham has already sold 330 of them!
Which means that he has earned $33,000 in just a few months! Pretty amazing, don’t you think?
This is where it gets interesting.
These are just normal guys, just like you and I. What they did differently was that they kept their minds open and took the opportunity when they noticed one.
Courage.
That’s the point. If you start thinking too much about whether your idea makes sense or not, or whether there’s something even better you can do instead, you’ll never do anything.
The one who makes money is not the one with the greatest ideas but the one who takes his good ideas and implements them into something that can be bought and sold. It’s not the quality of ideas that matter, it’s the number: if you implement 100 ideas, many of them will fail. But the ones that succeed might well be the great ones that give you a place in the history books.
While today isn’t the best day for starting a site for selling triangles to advertisers, or creating a Wiki that sells pages for $99, there are options all over you if you just keep your eyes open.
That’s why today I’m setting you a challenge.
Look around you, think about everyday things that surround you but you’ve never thought of monetizing before.
Then act.
Create a business that makes something common into something unique. A business that makes everyone go “Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?”.
And let me know about it.
I’m not setting any deadline to this so whenever your business is up and meets the standards defined in this post (as well as the standards defined in the earlier posts in this series) I will write a review post about your new business (*).
Good luck, and in case you are sitting in an empty room with no inspiration, here are some words to get you started:
- Coffee
- Pencil
- Whiteboard
- Time
- Morning
- Marmalade
- Brainstorm
- Rain
- Hum
- Disco ball
- Grass
- Inspiration
Keep your mind open. Stay true to yourself. Treat your customers well.
Don’t forget to take care of yourself and your family.
Be active but patient.
If you follow this advice I’m sure you can make it. Let me know how you’re doing and maybe we can help each other out along the way. Good luck to all of us!
*) Disclaimer: I will only post a separate review post for the first three great ideas submitted. If I get more entries than that, the rest will be just listed in one link post. After all, I want to keep putting in my normal content as well…
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August 17th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Jarkko, You know pages like million dollar wiki really interest me. The idea is really simple, almost stupid, but it works. I’m going to take on your challenge. Give me a little while to flush out my idea and get a page running and I’ll let you know what I got.
Marmalade - lol
August 17th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Like Rashid, I’m gonna need a week or so to work out specifics. But I just bought a domain name and have a partner to help out with sweat equity. Stay tuned…
August 17th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Guys, you’re amazing! I’m can’t wait to see what you have come up with. Good luck with your ideas and let me know when they are available so that I can report about them!
April 30th, 2008 at 6:53 am
I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know how to creat a website. How do all these websites make money. Can someone show me the ropes- Really lead me like a 6 year ols?