Well, it appears that if I am ever going to make enough money to buy a house in the area in which I live, I'm going to have to build a better mousetrap and become a multi-millionare by marketing it. To do that, I just need an idea that has got profit written all over it. I have one, and here it is:
A social networking Internet site centered around shopping.
Online communities have generally assembled for a variety of reasons. Some have to do with a certain sense of shared community values and the exchange of information (such as The Well.) Others reflect specific interests (such as music for MySpace.com) or purposes (such as dating for Match.com or Friendster.com) on the part of their members. No one has yet developed a social site based on rampant consumerism.
The plan operates in three parts. First, develop a membership profile questionaire that provides specific details about member consumer likes and dislikes when it comes to goods like apparel, jewelry, electronics, leisure goods, and home furnishings. Next, create a series of virtual storefronts for the service, turning the online experience into a combination of main street and the megamall. Lastly, allow members to interact with the system in two ways: join networks of people with similar interests, preferences, and social connections, and develop a service that acts as a "personal shopper", providing targeted advertising to each member for new goods and services based on their own preferences and the preferences of people with whom they interact in their social networks.
I figure that all you have to do after setting up the service is charge a modest monthly fee to provide some level of guaranteed income, charge a small markup on each item purchased through the system, and charge vendors advertising fees.
The successful implementation of this system will do one of two things for me. It will either make me rich, or it will allow me to accumulate experience that will make me a prime hire for some kind of online vendor, like Amazon. If I can't solve the problem of rampant consumerism, I'm going to profit by it, damn it!
Anyone want to work on this with me?
said drgeek
on 2006-05-02 at 1:39 p.m.
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