Chance to make a quick buck

Techno Page By Harendra Alwis

Who in their right mind would have believed that the world would go crazy to own a pebble? Two decades before the Internet became a household term, a salesman named Gary Dahl and his friends sat out one day in April 1975 and joked about what a nuisance it was to have pets like cats, dogs and fish. Gary claimed that he had a pet rock that was easy to keep and cheap to maintain. Within months he was selling close to ten thousand "pet rocks" per day, that he bought for one cent each complete with their owner manuals for $ 3.95. He had sold more than a million rocks and become a millionaire almost instantly, before pet rocks became a bygone fad.

Gary Dahl was ahead of the times. I'm sure he would trade all those rocks and his million dollars to make much more with the global reach of the Internet. The Internet is open to anyone with a sharp eye for a profit and a good dose of impertinence willing to tap into a global audience to exploit the community's goodwill or just to see how far they can push a social experiment and make a great deal of money in the process.

Perhaps the best example of this is Alex Tew, a 21–year–old British student, who came up with the idea of the Million Dollar Homepage (www.milliondollarhomepage.com). When he entered University in August 2005 he realised his tuition fees and accommodation for the first term would add up to $US 17,000 and at the end of his course he would be caught up in a lot of debt.

So he set up a website explaining his situation, clarifying that he was not after handouts, but instead was selling 1 million pixels (the dots on a computer screen that make up images) on his home page at US$1 each. He set up a grid measuring 1000 x 1000 pixels, which could be bought in minimum-size blocks of 100. Advertisers could buy as many blocks as they liked and post their logos on the space, which was then linked to their own homepage and promised to keep the advertisements on his website for five years. The idea blasted through to mainstream media and by the end of 2005, he had sold 850,000 pixels. He reserved the last 1000 for eBay, which sold for $US 38,100 and made $US 1,037,000 in four months.

For those who think outside the square, the internet offers infinite opportunity for fun, social experiment – and the chance to make a quick buck.

A pizza delivery man Kyle MacDonald from Canada set up a website in July 2005 (www.oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com) to swap one red paper clip for a house. He was willing to travel anywhere to make a deal that was agreed upon on the website and posted pictures of the traded items on the blog as it went along. He traded the clip for a fish-shaped pen and he was off and running. Just 13 trades later he swapped a snow globe for a movie role.

Then in July 2006 – a year after he started – the town of Kipling in Saskatchewan, Canada, gave him a house in exchange for the movie role. Mr MacDonald is now the author of a book entitled One Red Paperclip: Or How an ordinary man achieved his dream with the help of a simple office supply.

Some have sold a rotting piece of toast or an odd shaped corn of Kellogg's Nutrigrain for thousands of dollars on eBay and others have made fortunes just by trading domain names.

The Internet is nevertheless a cluttered and crowded place where for every idea that succeeds, many fail – not necessarily because they are not clever or any less creative, but randomly owing to bad luck and chance. To think that you know the ideal business model for the Internet or the perfect idea for a scheme (or scam) you can use to make quick money online is only as risky as starting one yourself and depending on it to make you rich.

What do you think?