BuyABeerCompany.Com Story

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.buyabeercompany.com/

BuyABeerCompany.com presents the most ambitious crowdsourcing effort yet: USD 300,000,000 for the Pabst Brewing Co. The 165-year-old firm, third-largest beer company in the US (going by 2008 sales), was originally sent to market by the IRS in 2000 as tax laws would not permit ownership by the non-profit Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation. Failure to meet the 2005 sales deadline saw it extended to 2010. With this deadline now imminent, two US ad agencies are ringing the bell for last orders from the beer-drinking crowd.

Hollywood-based Forza Migliozzi and New York's The Ad Store are the two firms behind the venture. They're asking (legal-age) fans of Pabst's 25 brands to pledge between USD 5 and 250,000 each towards acquisition of the company. Money will only be accepted if the full purchase amount is reached, at which point all contributors will get "a crowdsourced certificate of ownership as well as enough beer to match their pledge".

While BeerBankRoll promised the crowd control over the business plan for a pub and brewery, no crowdsourcing of decisions is mentioned on the BuyABeerCompany website (in fact, Pabst owns brands and outsources brewing to MillerCoors). Still, if figures on the website can be trusted the idea is going down like a cold beer on a sunny day—over USD 11 million has been raised. It could be that fans of the cheap-but-hip Pabst Blue Ribbon are just the crowd to go for community ownership, though whether 60 million will stump up five dollars each remains to be seen.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

America's Best Young Entrepreneurs - Sam Lessin, 26

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

http://drop.io/

Sam Lessin was working on leveraged buyouts at Bain & Co. when he and co-worker Darshan Somashekar noticed how difficult it was to share media files securely in private with clients or outside companies, even as sites like YouTube and Flickr made public file-sharing a snap. "Why is it so easy to publicly share stuff and so hard to privately share stuff?" says Lessin, a Harvard grad. The pair left in August 2007 to found Drop.io to solve the problem. They had a prototype working in six weeks, and raised $4 million in venture funding in early 2008. (Somashekar, who is 25, left the company shortly after co-founding it.)

Drop.io lets users create an online "drop" where they can place media files like audio, video, or documents. They control how it can be accessed (with a password or a paywall, for example), published through an RSS feed, or even made available to other users in real time. Users can even call a number assigned to the drop and leave a message that will appear online as an MP3 file. Individual users can sign up for a free version, but the premium Drop.io service ranges from $10 a year and $100 a month, or higher for more involved custom applications. Last month, Yahoo Mail started using Drop.io to let users send large files of up to 100 megabytes. The company now has 12 employees. Lessin says Drop.io has millions of users each month, with 1% to 5% using paid services. Revenue in 2009 is up 500% so far from the same period last year, he says.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Smart Medical Consumer - Don't Mess With Banu Ozden

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

http://www.smartmedicalconsumer.com/

Some people you just shouldn't mess with. When Turkish-born Banu Ozden couldn't get a straight answer from her health insurance company about treatment costs after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, she got mad. And she got madder still as she went through treatment and received myriad bills filled with unintelligible codes and statements that didn't accurately reflect what she owed. When she finally sorted through the mess, she discovered that she had overpaid by about $4,000.

Instead of simply complaining, Ozden, 44, decided to get even. Formerly a computer science professor at the University of Southern California and director of computing systems research at Bell Labs, Ozden built a medical-billing management service designed for fellow patients. Her Web biz, Smart Medical Consumer, launched in January 2007, with $380,000 from angels. The New York-based company has spent no money on marketing but already has 1,000-some registered users who upload their confidential claims and invoices.

Smart Medical Consumer plans to make money by selling ads to medical and pharmaceutical companies. Though Banu continues to undergo cancer treatment, she says she feels healthy and plays tennis when she can and would like to get back into windsurfing.


For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

http://www.pickydomains.com/

PickyDomains.Com is a perfect example of how to turn one’s talent into a profitable business. With ever expanding Internet and tens of millions existing websites, finding an available domain name that’s not already taken by cybersquatters can be a real nightmare.

But one man’s problem is another man’s solution. Rather than to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a domain name on the aftermarket, an increasing number of web entrepreneurs turn to professional “domain namers”.

While most naming agencies charge a non-refundable fee that can be as high as $1500 for a corporate domain, one service that unites 17 professional domain namers from countries like United States, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, decided to offer a risk-free service that costs only 50 dollars per domain.

After 50 dollars are deposited, clients start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail for a period of 30 days. If they see a domain they like, they register it and notify the service about domain acquired. The individual, who came up with the name, gets $25, the other half going to the service. If no domain is registered, the money is refunded in full.

While the idea is brainlessly simple, it appears that PickyDomains.Com has no competition with its risk-free business model. But that is almost certain to change as more people find out that finding available domain names for other people can be a profitable business.

Domain Names: How to Choose & Protect a Great Name for Your Website

The Domain Game

I've Got a Domain Name--Now What???: A Practical Guide to Building a Website and Web Presence

Profiting From Locavores

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

http://www.localdirt.com/

Few would dispute the benefits of eating locally grown food, both for the environment and for human health. Access is the challenge, which is why we've seen such goods sold in vending machines, delivered by bicycle and packed in five-dollar bags for commuters. The latest spotting? Local Dirt, a Wisconsin-based site that connects buyers and sellers of locally grown food nationwide.

Farmers and other vendors begin by creating a profile page to promote their produce, as well as listing the quantities and prices of the products they have to sell. Individual and organizational buyers can then search for local food sellers and products in their area—searching by address, ZIP code or via map—and browsing the listings of those near them. Once they've found something they like, buyers can order food for pick-up at farmers' markets or farms. A purchase order is automatically generated and mailed to them for use in picking up the food and paying the seller. Listing, ordering and bidding on items in Local Dirt is free; yearly memberships for more sophisticated features—such as wholesale capabilities—begin at USD 360.

Whether it's by bringing the food to the consumers or the consumers to the food, there's no doubt the resulting boost for local food consumption is a win-win for everyone—and the planet. One to emulate in your neck of the food-producing woods...?

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Gutterball 2 Review

Doc Regenerator Review

Cryptainer Review

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.