Saturday, November 28, 2009

Website idea 18: How-Did-You-Meet.com - True stories about meeting a partner

Of all the ideas I have posted here I personally like this one most: a site that allows people to share their stories about finding a "significant one".

On Google, query "where did you meet your" returns 871 000 results. Query "how did you meet your" returns 1 710 000 results. Most of those pages seems to be discussion about where people have find their girlfriends / boyfriends / wifes / husbands / one night stands. Some of the discussion threads I checked out were HUGE and also very entertaining. So there seems to be a great deal of willingness to share and read this kind of stories. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find a site dedicated to this subject. A site that would collect all those stories together, give user an ability to rate and comment stories and read stories by popularity or type (types could be for example: "result was a marriage", "result was a relationship", "result was a short romance" or "result was a failure").

That's right, you can also allow people to write about true life failed pick up attempts. I'm sure there will be a lot of hilarous ones when you have enough make a list called "20 worst pick up attempts EVER". This is the kind of content that easily caughts an attention of a casual surfer when they arrive on your site. To make things even better, people using Digg or other social bookmarking service are in love with that kind of short, entertaining lists. See? When they arrive en masse, a good portion of them will check out other pages too and maybe even come back later.

To get started, you can write to some popular wedding or relationship discussion board and ask people to tell how they met their partner. Also provide a link to your site and ask a permission to add their answers there (it might be a good idea to talk with a moderator beforehand). Do this on several forums and also trade links with dating sevices etc. This way you will get both stories and visitors. Soon your site will gain enough momentum so that people will start to write their stories directly on your site.

One of the sweetest things of this site is you can fill it with dating- and wedding-related ads which usually have high value.

Some resources you might find useful:
Using CAPTCHA
Using weighted rating

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Website idea 17: A blog about near misses

It seems the FAIL Blog has become very popular. No wonder: it has an original idea and lots of entertaining content that appeal to many people. I wondered if I could come up with somewhat similar idea and the result was this: a blog about near misses with death or serious injury. This blog would be a about extraordinary lucky people who only narrowly avoided a disaster. It could contain videos, images and stories. For example these videos:

Near death by coke bottle
Luckiest guys in the world top 7
Compilation of near misses
Rally car gone wild
Juggernaut vs Police cruiser

And stories:

Man who survived 133 days in a small raft
Man who fell 4 kilometers without parachute and survived
Man who survived WTC collapse inside building
Man who saved himself by amputating his hand

You can easily find more content by searching with suitable keywords (especially on Youtube), by asking people on discussion boards, by user suggestions and by watching tv shows that feature amazing survival stories.

I tried to find such a blog in vain, so this seems to be niche without much competition. The name of a blog could be something like "Near Misses", "Flirting with Death", "Fooling Grim Reaper", "Cheating Death", "Lucky S.O.B of a Day" or something like that.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Website idea 16: Gaming site for disabled people

Games for disabled people: did you know there exists such a sub-genre of gaming? When you think of it, isn't it natural that people with visual or hearing impairment, people with motorical problems or people suffering from mild brain damage want to enjoy gaming too.More importantly, gaming can be used very efficiently in rehabilitation of such conditions. Here is one example. I could also link some scientific articles that came to the same conclusion, but as they are only in Finnish they wouldn't be very useful here.The problem is that games designed for this genre are very hard to find. I tried once but failed miserably. With a great effort I managed to found some games scattered around the Internet, but for what I have read there must be a plenty of more, but very poorly marketed. Maybe majority of them are even made as custom-made products that are used only by the organisation that ordered it (what a waste).

So why don't you make an improvement: a portal that lists, reviews and sells such games. There could also be a discussion forum and a news section. That kind of site, with millions of potential users worldwide, would help developers to come to the public with their creations and encourage others to make such games. The site, of course, should be as accessible as possible.In addition to "getting some karma" by helping others to enjoy their life you could cash for the time you have spent by charging a little for every commercial game that is listed to your site, or sold through it.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Website idea 15: Take advantage of women's obsession with shoes


Today I'm going to suggest building a site about women's shoes. I can already hear your mumbling: "this idea sounds stupid and is definetly not badass at all, in fact it is totally gay". That is what I also thought at first. But let me put it this way:

People often tend to make websites about things they are most interested but most website developers are a bit geekish males like me (I have wrote about this subject more comprehensively here). So, how many people are there that meet the both of the following requirements:

a) They have enough pragmatism and passion for technology to become succesful webmasters
b) They start to scream and jump for joy whenever they pass a cute shoe store window

I would estimate the number is about 100 people worldwide (of whom at least 20 are perverted males). Just kidding, of course the number is bigger and I also acknowledge there are very good female web developers who simultaneously adore shoes. But still, I dare to claim that people who meet both of the requirements are scarce and the result is insufficient amount of shoe sites. And that gives you an opportunity to make a lot of money. Maybe it won't be so fascinating to run such a site but at least you should earn something. And in case you are a woman, it is even better because you might be actually interested about the subject.

So the site could contain at list following features:

  • On the frontpage pics and description of the most recent shoe arrivals and the best offers. Possibility to comment these stories.
  • "The shoe of a week" box on a front page, featuring a paid review of a particular shoe and a link to the store that is selling it.
  • List of all relevant shoe stores, with a description, website, contact details and opening and closing times. Possibly also a price of a standard shipment and map to the shop.
  • Reasonable amount of ads.
  • Possibly some articles on how to choose shoes, how to clean them etc.
  • If the site becomes very popular you can also consider a discussion forum.
Many of these features could be take advantage of forms, so users and shop owners can submit data by themselves and you just need to accept or reject it.

If you are living in the relatively small country, or more accurately, relatively small "language area" such as Netherlands / Dutch your job will be easier. You can include all the Dutch shoe stores and shoe store chains to your site, both online and offline ones. But what if you are living in a huge country like USA? It would probably be too ambitious to try to include all US shoe stores to your sites, so it might be a good idea to concentrate on one state only, or maybe one big city like New York. Or include the entire country but narrow the focus - for example concentrate on specific kind of shoes only.

Technically speaking, the easiest solution to get the site running would probably be installing a Joomla or similar CMS and buying this kind of template.

blogger templates | Make Money Online