Internet Start-Up – Reloaded for the Web 2.0 world

I have come up with some very bizarre ideas that I have always wanted to turn into an Internet business.

Idea #1
My first plan was to create www.ilovemytoyota.com. The point of this site would be to provide users a location to document how many miles their Toyota cars and trucks had and post pictures. The idea would be to document and track the obscenely large number of miles Toyota vehicles can obtain. As a growth plan, the site could turn into a framework to provide a community for Toyota loving people. The general hurdle I faced with turning this idea into a reality was the time investment and effort it would take to develop the code, since I already knew how to create this environment and knew of many cheap web hosting sites. (I am, of course, glossing over the point that this site would either be a repeat of an existing site and/or just not a good idea at all.)

Idea #2
My next claim to fame idea was to create a clothing line called “Whiptastic” based on the MBW copyrighted phrase “Whipstastic Handling”. The idea was born when I took the “Whipstastic Handling” decal out of a magazine and stuck it on my friend’s plain colored tee-shirt. I thought I could create shirts, shorts, pants, and other “Whiptasitic” inspired/branded apparel. My initial challenge here was the BMW owed the copyright to “Whiptastic Handling”. Then, of course, I needed actual designers and access to a clothing source.

Idea #3
I like to look at the food store sale ads online, and I thought that it would be great if there was a single site that mashed-up food store sale ads and the location of these stores. This idea would create a single site that would drastically reduce the amount of time people spend search through various sale ads from numerous food stores. The challenges that I face here are similar to idea #1.

A common problem with all of these ideas was the cost to actually attempt to turn them into reality.

However, all is not lost, as I recently read an article in Time Magazine titled “Get Rich Slow – Surprise: there’s never been a better moment to bootstrap your own Internet business. All you need is a laptop, a broadband connection and a great idea. Inside the new statup-boom”. This article details various success stories of individuals who, with less than $10,000 were able to outsource the development and outsource the web hosting to worldwide locations. Since most of these ideas are old news to me now, I found an interesting point made deep in the article that the new barriers to entry are getting your site recognized in the vast sea of the Internet, and not financial, technical, or regional. Another interesting point was that in this new economy, it is OK to fail, and to fail many times, when trying to develop an online business, given the fact that it is so inexpensive to try in the first place.

It is nice to see how Web 2.0 technologies have now given the average person even more tools to become a successful Internet entrepreneur.

Maybe one of my hair-brained ideas has a chance...