10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich

1. Million Dollar Homepage

1000000 pixels, charge a dollar per pixel – that’s perhaps the dumbest idea for online business anyone could have possible come up with. Still, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire.

2. SantaMail

Ok, how’s that for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids? Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a couple million dollars richer. Full Story

3. Doggles

Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a business. How in the world did they manage to become millionaires and have shops all over the world with that one? Beyond me.

4. LaserMonks

LaserMonks.com is a for-profit subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges. Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were $2.5 million! Praise the Lord. Full Story

5. AntennaBalls

You can’t sell antenna ball online. There is no way. And surely it wouldn’t make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason Wall did, and now he is now a millionaire. Full Story

6. FitDeck

Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. Sounds like a disaster idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million. Surely beats what military pays.

7. PositivesDating.Com

How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin thought that someone would, so they created a dating site for HIV positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.

8. Designer Diaper Bags

Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that's big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie's company, Diapees & Wipees, has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.

9. PickyDomains

Hire another person to think of a cool domain name for you? No way people would pay for this. Actually, naming domain names for others turned out a thriving business, especially, when you make the entire process risk free. PickyDomains currently has a waiting list of people who want to PAY the service to come up with a snappy memorable domain name. PickyDomains is expected to hit six figures this year. Full Story

10. Lucky Wishbone Co.

Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out. Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.

50 Ways to Get Traffic To Your Site

Here are 50 ways to get free traffic to your site.

1. Write and submit articles to the article directories.

2. Leave comments on other people’s blogs with a backlink to your site.

3. Answer people’s questions on www.answers.yahoo.com.

4. Post in forums and have a link to your site in your signature.

5. Write a press release and submit it to www.PRWeb.com.

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate category on www.CraigsList.com.

7. Give an unbiased testimonial on a product/service that you have used in exchange for a backlink to your site.

8. Start a blog and submit it to the 100’s of free blog directories.

9. Manually submit your website to the major search engines.

10. Optimize each page of your website for a particular keyword or search phrase.

11. Add a link in your email signature to your website. It’s a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.

12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.

13. Use PPC search engine advertising.

14. Add a “bookmark this site” link to your webpages.

15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.

16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.

17. Hold a crazy content and make it go viral.

18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site.

19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.

20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the net.

21. Participate in a banner or link exchange program.

22. Create a software program and give it away for free.

23. Purchase the misspellings or variations of your domain name, or those of your competitors.

24. Buy a domain name related to your niche that is already receiving traffic and forward it to your site.

25. Pass out business cards with your domain on them everywhere you go.

26. Start and affiliate program and let your affiliates send you visitors.

27. Start a page on social bookmarking sites such as www.MySpace.com.

28. Submit a viral video to www.YouTube.com

29. Conduct and publish surveys to your website.

30. Find joint venture partners that will send you traffic.

31. Start your own newsletter or ezine.

32. Use a autoresponder or email campaign to keep people coming back to your site.

33. Purchase ads on other sites.

34. Send a free copy of your product to other site owners in exchange for a product review.

35. Sell or place classified ads on www.eBay.com with a link to your site.

36. Post free classified ads on any of the sites that allow them with a link to your site.

37. Exchange reciprocal links with other related websites.

38. Network with other people at seminars or other live events.

39. Purchase advertising in popular newsletters or ezines.

40. Advertise on other product’s “thank you” pages.

41. Create a free ebook and list in on the “free ebook” sites.

42. Buy and use a memorable domain name.

43. Do something controversial.

44. Create an Amazon profile and submit reviews for books and other products that you have read.

45. Start a lens on www.Squidoo.com.

46. Use a traffic exchange (low quality traffic, but can sometimes be worthwhile).

47. Get referrals form similar but non-competing sites.

48. Create and sell a product with resell or giveaway rights and include a link to your site in it o others pass it around for you.

49. Email your list. If you don’t have one, get one.

50. Buy a pair of sandals; get your website engraved on the bottom and walk on the beach, stomp in the mud or play in the snow.

Get quality links through website directory submission!

Search engine optimization is getting more and more difficult by the day. The search engines are evolving at an incredible speed, making it harder for us SEO's to rank our websites highly.

With that said, there are a few tried and true principles that we need to do when optimizing our website. The first of which, and the one that I always tell people to concentrate on is getting quality, 1 way links pointing to your website.

The more quality links you can get pointing to your website, the higher you will rank, period.

While there are many black hat tricks and tactics that you can do for short term gain, I would suggest NOT spending your time on those things. I would focus my entire effort on figuring out how to get other websites to link to yours without you linking back to them. That is the biggest key to ranking well in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Doing this is easier said that done. One of the easiest known ways to get quality, one way links is by finding website directories and then submitting your website to them. This can be a very tedious process, but always a very rewarding process at the same time.

http://www.theinternetscashmachine.com/recommends/directorysubmitter.htm

You can either submit your website to these directories manually, pay someone to do it for you, OR you can use one of the website directory submission programs out there. The best program for the money that we've found is a program called "Directory Submitter" created my internet marketing expert, Brad Callen.

This program allows you to submit your website to over 1600 website directories and can save you an incredible amount of time in doing so. You simply enter your website details into the software once, and then select the directory you would like to submit to. The software will then, automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for each directory and allow you to quickly submit your site.

Not only does this save you time in submitting your site, but it saves you an incredible amount of time in just finding the free directories online. I highly suggest grabbing a directory submission program if you decide to take advantage of one of the easiest ways to get quality, 1 way links to your website.

You can learn more about Directory Submitter here:

http://www.theinternetscashmachine.com/recommends/directorysubmitter.htm

Free Backlinks from Answers.com

Want a free backlink from Answers.com?

Here’s how:
1. Find a term that your website ranks top 10 in Google. The term could be competitive or non competitive, it doesn’t matter.
2. Point a link or several links to http://www.answers.com/keyword-term, http://www.answers.com/keyword+term, http://www.answers.com/topic/keyword-term, or http://www.answers.com/topic/keyword+term to get them indexed. Doesn’t matter where the links are coming from, the point is to get the Answers.com page indexed.
3. Free back link.
4. Remove the links to http://www.answers.com/keyword-term or http://www.answers.com/keyword+term if you worry about reciprocal links etc.

Some examples (Google Cache versions):
Lm Car Rental
Yahoopersonals
Personels/

What’s happening here?

Basically whenever Answers.com cannot find a match to a query, it displays the top 10 Google results with a bunch of sponsored links. Just like a scraper site. The top 10 results are displayed with clean html links.

One thing - since Answers.com works like a scraper site, you’ll notice some pages will end up in the supplemental index. Obvious search terms that have been scraped elsewhere will just end up in the supplemental index. Some of these Answers.com pages have some decent PR. For example this one is showing a PR 4.

Even more examples:
Google Search to find examples

All Answers.com pages that return Google results have a title like this:
Keyword Term: Web Search Results from Answers.com

So searching for “web search results from Answers.com” on the site:Answers.com will give you all the pages with Google results.

Warning:

This may be considered spam/blackhat etc.

Clickbank broke the $1 Million Mark

Press Release: Clickbank broke $1 million revenue mark in a single day’s business.

Wow! This is great news:

Below is a press release issued May 8 2007 by Clickbank.

BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 8 /PRNewswire/ — For the first time in its 8-year history, ClickBank, an online retailer for buyers and sellers of digitally delivered products and services, broke the $1 million revenue mark in a single day’s business.

ClickBank is one of the world’s largest online commerce systems for those engaged in buying, selling and promoting digitally delivered products and/or services. The products and services developed and promoted by the company’s more than 100,000 affiliates and 10,000 vendors include ebooks, computer programs, software and games — no physical products are shipped. The company’s Internet-based business-to-consumer network handles an average of more than 20,000 transactions each day.

“A $1 million day is a very important milestone for us,” said Bob King, ClickBank CEO. “Our business model relies on providing a wide variety of products and choices to our online business community. Clearly, such volume demonstrates our model is effective and is benefiting product owners and affiliates and consumers alike.”

According to data from Internet Retailer, ClickBank ranks in the Top 10 of pure play Internet retailers today. The company had more than $200 million in revenue for 2006 with just 42 employees.

ClickBank’s online commerce system benefits anyone with a digital or downloadable product or service to sell. The company provides a safe, efficient shopping experience and simple checkout with a wide variety of payment options that streamline processes and increase sales. The ClickBank retail community is powered by Internet marketers who earn commissions by promoting products on their own Web sites, earning significant commissions for every sale they make. With the lowest barrier to entry in the digital retail market, ClickBank also offers unprecedented fraud protection and a state-of-the-art security platform for its affiliates and publishers, as well as their retail customers.

Bob Dunlap, ClickBank’s director of marketing, puts the company’s growth into historical perspective. “For the past 20 years, the business world has been about accelerating the speed and ease with which we can exchange information, products and services on a global level. The way we do business today needs to be on-demand, convenient, secure and at our fingertips. ClickBank is leading the way in these fundamental business and technological changes.”

Based on current projections, King predicts that million dollar days will soon become the baseline for ClickBank’s ongoing success.

“eBay is the online retailer for anyone wanting to sell things — tangible products and goods that you can actually ship and hold,” he said. “ClickBank is the online retailer for everything else — books, software or games or any other item that can be downloaded and delivered digitally.”

About ClickBank: ClickBank is the largest online retailer for those engaged in buying, selling and promoting digitally delivered products and services. ClickBank can be described as a virtual business network linking buyers, sellers and promoters of digital products and services. ClickBank facilitates these interactions and transactions and provides guaranteed tracking of sales, state-of-the-art fraud protection and a totally secure platform. ClickBank is firmly positioned in the list of the Internet’s Top Ten pure play Internet retailers focused exclusively on digital and downloadable products. ClickBank handles an average of more than 20,000 transactions a day.

ClickBank
CONTACT: Lisa Metzger, Metzger Associates, +1-303-786-7000, ext. 2215,
lmetzger@metzger.com, for ClickBank

This release signals good things for anyone using ClickBank products to generate income, and is certainly serves as motivation that there is an extreme amount of business out there.

Here are Some Great Web Applications

ConceptShare: Create interactive workspaces where designs can be shared with colleagues or customers to gather feedback. Annotation tools are provided so that participants can draw, crop or point out design changes. Free account has limitations in number of workspaces and amount of disk space. Updated: 2007-04-28 06:19

Yourminis: Create your own start page and configure it with built-in widgets such as search, quote of the date, weather, photos, videos etc. Updated: 2007-04-28 06:07

Clickdensity: Records visitor's clicks on your website in real-time, and generates a "heat map" that shows you the relative popularity of components on your pages. Free 30-day trial. Updated: 2007-04-28 06:04

Zoho Projects: Online project management tool. Features include tasks, milestones, calendar, reports, time tracking, file sharing etc. Updated: 2007-04-28 05:57

walk2web: Curious little webapp that lets you surf the web visually by walking through websites and their links via a navigation tree. Updated: 2007-04-28 05:53

OnlineWebCheck: OnlineWebCheck is an online web page checking service that checks your web site for HTML problems that can affect your search engine rankings and cause problems for your visitors. You can enter a URL, upload an HTML file, or enter a code snippet. Updated: 2007-04-28 05:33

King Ping: Ping and promote your blog, feed, or podcast on various services, such as Technorati, FeedBurner, Syndic8 etc. Updated: 2007-04-28 05:31

Peepel: Online office suite comprising of a word processor and spreadsheet. It is supported by an engine that gives you a multi-window desktop within a single browser window. Updated: 2007-04-10 06:43

Ransom Note Generator: Converts user-entered text into a "ransom note" composed of digital newspaper clippings. Updated: 2007-04-10 06:38

Social Bookmarking at it's Finest

If you're into social bookmarking like me you are going to love this page I have created. I put over 100 social bookmarking sites on one page for your enjoyment. This will help you get traffic to your site. Here is the site: http://www.theinternetscashmachine.com/traffictools.htm

I just added the social bookmarking sites below:

CiteULike
iGooi
Murl
MyHQ
GlobuSport
Phil-Country
Bluedot
co.mments
doHat
EasyBM
Mobleo
GuiCookies
iFaves
MemFrag
MyLinkVault
MyWebDesktop
OBManager