Stupid Ideas that made people millionaire

Everything we use was once somebody's idea. Do you think 100 years ago that people would believe we could talk to people around the world by using a "box" and it would not cost anything?
What about walking on the moon? cars? aeroplanes, nuclear weapons, millions of ideas...some better than others and some make people richer than others.
Look at Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook... such a seemingly simple idea and now it has more than 1/7th of the planet accessing it.

All it takes is one idea.

yup i agree. It's interesting they all made good money with their own ideas, i liked the SantaMail's idea. that makes sense.
Do you also have any crazy Idea???

yeah, I have a lot of stupid ideas. But I don't go forward with them because I think they are, you know, stupid. hahah

Its wicked and eye opening. If you have any idea that makes even a little sense then you run with it. People who dont take risks end up working in corporations.

I think 21st century is Stupid Ideas era

My first experience was similar to Fitdeck. In 2005 I ran one of the most popular penny stock sites on the Internet, and most of my pages were generally one of the top 3 search results for any ticker symbol. Ah, the good old days when you could get away with stuff like that. The site held its own in ad revenue and featuring companies on the home page, but that's not where the big payout came from.

I created a deck of playing cards, where each card would feature a different stock, then solicited all of the companies. For $25,000 they could have their logo, ticker symbol, etc. on any available card they wanted, and they could pay the $25,000 with restricted stock (making their cost effectively zero). The decks of cards would be given away at investor conferences, or to anyone who requested one from our site - 100,000 decks printed, and placed in the hands of investors interested in penny stocks for years to come. The first 52 takers either paid the fee or issued the equivalent value in stock, and once all 52 spots were sold we had the decks printed and followed through with what we said we would do.

Cost to print and distribute the decks was about $250k and the value of the sales after getting the restricted legends removed was over $1.6 million. Sold a huge chunk of it to cover the cost of the decks and make some money, and I still hold a lot of these stocks today.

Unfortunately it would be illegal to duplicate this style of marketing due to some of the newer SEC regulations, but it was an easy cash grab for its era.

Those ideas aren't necessarily trash ideas, albeit some are better than others. If you're walking around looking at ideas that are actually really great, calling them trash, it's no wonder you're struggling to come up with something.

Besides it's like 1% idea, 99% execution.

How about the brothers who just simply built a better duck call and parlayed that into $$$ as well as a TV show. Ya never know what's gonna hit sometimes.

Good way to have a great idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Better way to have a great idea is to copy someone else's great idea

Facebook comes to mind...

Its crazy to think about how such simple ideas can completely turn around someone's life. Imagine what you could do with an extra million or so dollars.
However allot of people make the mistake of thinking small with get rich quick and easy schemes. Don't fall into this mentality.

I'm working on a few projects dealing with AI and autonomous personal assistants with my uni professors. I honestly believe this will end up making me far more money than anything I do in IM. (Honestly, I find IM enjoyable, like a hobby really. I love to learn and implement information, as well as making money)

But don't let that be discouraging either- Big thinking does not require some fancy degree at all. Think outside the box and pursue knowledge on your own. We have so much free content available to us. Many top level colleges are hosting Free online courses where you can learn almost anything you want.

Take away what you want from this- Just don't be afraid to think outside the box. Thats exactly what these guys did (as mentioned in OP's first post). I don't think they brainstormed specifically around what other people have done in the past.

The best ideas are not necessarily the most complicated, you make the evidence. Your post is like a breath of fresh air, thank you.

There Is a guy who sold a month old app to Dropbox for $100M, talk about making a quick buck.

Hi. My first post here on the Warrior forum. I have to say that the statement, "stupid ideas that made people millionaires" has to be a bit of an oxymoron. These are all fantastic ideas. Simple, yes, stupid NO. But I know what you mean.

Like most folk, I have had my own "stupid" ideas over the years. Some of them I strongly believe do have great potential. The hard part is making them happen. Inventors of great products invariably die poor. It is those who have the knowledge and dare I say it "cunning" to exploit those ideas who see the big bucks! Look for example at the program Dragons Den. There are some quite fantastic ideas, and some very clever inventors who come through the doors. The ones with all the money however, are the ones, sitting waiting to pounce and exploit!

Imagine if you were the one who had thought about the "sell a pixel" website. Many, including myself would have not known how to build such a website themselves. So what do you do? Take the idea to some whiz kid website builder who might then steal that idea?... or do you go to a reputable company(?) who charge a fortune?... else do you undertake weeks/months of study in order that you try and build it all yourself?

See what I mean. The idea is simple, but the practice of getting it up and running is hard. Facebook. Another relatively simple idea on the surface, but wow, getting people you can trust to do the hard task of setting it up, and keeping it a secret, or stopping them from stealing it from you....!

Yes, often the idea is the easy part, but getting it from the drawing board to the real world is the problem.

There was a time not so long ago when almost everybody drank tap water. NO ONE back in those days would have paid for a bottle of water. Now drinking water is a multi-billion dollar business.

No idea is stupid. It's all about imagination and what's possible. I could become extremely rich by selling bended pens so you can use the pen in different situations. I have thousands of ideas going on in my mind. Remember don't let anyone stop you because your idea sounds stupid. I know a guy who became a rich by selling plastic.

Life is really simple but, we insist on making it complicated.

Nothing stupid with that ideas: Great, simple ideas (like Facebook) and the skill and determination to make it happen.

Even Pinterest and Vine were regarded as stupid ideas... in a way

Article: What a stupid idea by Dustin Curtis

Love seeing things like this.. it just shows that new ideas are still making people money every day

Kind of like the Pet Rock craze in the 1970s. Some guy marketed rocks as the "perfect pet" because you don't have to feed them, walk then, clean up after them, etc. in 6 months he sold over 1.5 million of these rocks and became a millionaire. Insane.

lol. The best idea was the one where some dude made a LOT of money selling rocks/stones as pets

I'm sure all these ideas have been thought about before, it was the people who took action and made it happen, they are the ones making the big bucks

You guys left out the single best stupid idea that made the inventor many many many millions.

The, Pet Rock

crazy ideas get viral fast now days...I might have one

It hasn't made me millions, but it has been nice. I wrote a cookbook.... Fifty Shades of Bacon.

LOL... my father worked on the multi-millon dollar home of they guy that invented the little metal button on the top of your baseball cap. One thing you need to do to be a successful entrepreneur, is just take a look around you. Everything that you see was created by someone and there's a really good chance that, that someone is wealthy because of it. I told this to a young kid once...he said "what about the trees planted here" and I said "We live in a city, do you think these trees just magically appeared in a perfect row down the street?"

Everyone in the world has ideas.

the millionaires and billionaires take action and execute their ideas

Take an idea and add you own twist to it to make it different and unique. The main thing is to stay focused on it and don't give up. That's how all the others became successful with there ideas.

I love watching SharkTank and some of the ideas introduced, it makes you wonder....

I know the guy who up with the idea of mobile text messaging was laughed at too.

Ha? how many phones come without text messaging feature?

cha cha chia pet.

You have to be willing to continously strike out and have people tell you that your crazy and you will not succeed. Please do not give up trying. Some ideas are not meant to excel and thats okay. It's know thats important. Concentrate on the end goal and remember proper execution