start your own business

[SkinEmAll]

About a year ago I was reading somewhere about how during tuff economic times, lottery and booze sales rise dramatically. So I thought the perfect business would be to find a used ice cream truck, pimp it out ofcoarse, hire a couple of strippers and stock the truck with booze and lotto tickets, and take the product to the people, brilliant!

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by TheMalcolmConnection

That's the best way to do it. The town I live in is small and basically it's a college town with both Washington and Lee and VMI. What I hate about living here is that the people coming into town (most retirees from the north) open up the most idiotic business ventures ever and they all fold within two years because their fortune they made in NYC dried up.

OK, basically my community is made up of college kids and retirees, and just recently opened are three new banks, a freaking SMOOTHIE stand and a dog bakery. How many of those do you think are going to work out? I'll let you guess, only the banks are still standing right now.

Basically, just give the students or retirees what they want... booze.

If someone were to come in here and open up an actual sport's bar that doesn't get taken over by the town white trash and have student specials, trivia, kind of like a Buffalo Wild Wings, they would easily make a profit within the first two years.

smoothie stand near a college failed? that sucks, usually those are big in the college crowd

I know a guy who bought a few of those smoothie and food carts (think the ones that do icees, smoothies, coffee, bbq/hotdogs, etc) and put them in grocery store parking lots, etc and does pretty well with them.

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by firstdown

A store opened up called "Great Mistakes" they sold items that had small flaws in them. I passed the store one day and their sign read like this.

Great Mistakes

Going out of business sale

I got a good laugh out of that.

looool

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by Daseal

The more I study for certifications, the more I realize that good prep materials really lack. They write these 800 page books full of fluff that you have to sort through to get to the things you actually need to know. I'd LOVE to see a line of books aimed at people that basically know what they're doing, but need to pass the test. So you look at what subjects are on the test, cover those subjects without frills, and move on. For the Cert I'm studying for now (Security+), the book Im reading could easily be condensed to 100-150 pages instead of 800.

former roomie who did this cert used this guide

Wiley::CompTIA Security+ Review Guide: SY0-201

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by over the mountain

those facebook and myspace websites have made a ton of money.

someone should start a website based off that format but for pets.

dogspace.com; petspace.com; dogbook.com; petbook.com

so people could create accounts for their dogs, post pictures and all that other jazz. people love their dogs.

I've known some people from webmaster communities that sold some clone sites like that, there's decent money in it but you can also pay a few thousand and really get nothing as well. There are sites like you suggested though and it reminds me of something that my great-uncle did years ago. He paid a local dev group to come up with a site that would help cow breeders find matches based on some crazy number of criteria. You could do something like 10 traits for free as a trial and you paid to match more than that. He ended up selling it for somewhere in the 7 digits, this was at the start of the dot-com boom.

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

I think the social networking idea has been pretty well exhausted at this point.

yeah I thought that then boom comes twitter out of nowhere.. I think that there will be some more things like that but with better options, more media embedding, etc.. I don't think that it's necessarily a BETTER idea, but I'd imagine there's work being done on stuff like that anyways

there are a lot of twitter knockoffs coming out now.. well.. they're more niche-based

Blippy / What are your friends buying?

[tryfuhl]

Originally Posted by GMScud

You're in MD now tryfuhl? Weren't you in or near Detroit?

Yeah I've moved way too much lately. When I first joined here I was in Lynchburg, VA... moved to Charlotte, NC last March I believe.. Detroit area in umm September maybe.. Job dried up in MI and I wanted to come back to this area (though a bit closer to DC, but oh well) and an opportunity came up. Just have to secure a decent job and I'll be set, then another move will be in store (not a lot directly around here) but it'll still be in the DC area hopefully.