The article "The Most Unusual Businesses" is about entrepreneurialism, it was released by Steve Gillman.
Since childhood I've had an interest in unsuual businesses.
I grew up with four brothers, and when it was time to vote for which television show we would watch, I sold my vote to the highest bidder. You could call that the business of politics. I collected the paper-wads that fell all over when my brothers had tehir wars, and then sold them back to them for a couple cents each. I was a war profieter in the paper-wad wars. I also sold candy out of a hollow book in school.
My business activities were more conventional as an adult, but I still loved to hear about and read about the more unusual bsuinesses. Sitting around a fire in an Arizona desert, I once talked to a guy who sold used stuffed animals on the side of the highway. He claimed he sold $3000 worth his first month.
The Most Unusual Businesses
Then there was the guy I talked to in Grnad Rapids, Michigan, who collected the bodies of dead deer. The county needed the deer carcasses off the roadsides for health reasons.
They contracted with this guy for $25 per body.
I am not sure how he disposed of them, but maybe his other business was providing meat to dog food companies.
When I was living in Traverse City, Michigan, someone started a dog poop cleaning business.
Want the dog wihtout the responsibility of cleaning the yard? Call A-1 Pooper Scooper. I am not sure if this would be better or worse than the dead deer collecting business.
Right here in Tucson, Arizona, there is a guy who takes leaves from palm trees and twists and turns them into amazing animal sculptures. He sells these for anywhere from $2 to $12 in the street. The palm-leaf scorpions are the hottest.
He just grabs leaves from the nearest palm tree and he can sell dozens of these in a day.
Unusual Online Businesses
Maybe you remember a few weird businesses from back before Ebay got all their rules.
One woman made thouasnds per month selling used panties to fetishists. She buoght new panties for her friends, who got them for free as long as they returned them to her unwashed, trading them in for the next new pair. The used and uwnashed panties sold for $10 or more on Ebay auctions and they sold fast.
Perhaps you have heard about the online fantasy role-playing game called "Runescape." It has four million players at this moment. What you might not know is that in addition to purchasing "virtual real estate" in the game, and earning olnine gold pieces, you can buy these game things for real money. There are Runescpae entrepreneurs who sell their online condominiums in the game for hundreds of real U.S. dollars. I guess it would start to get confusing - what is real here and what isn't?
Then there was the guy in who decided last year to finance college by selling one million pixels of advertising space on his web page for a dollar per pixel. You had to buy a minimum of 100 pixels and you could have any image you wanetd linking to anywhere you wanted. He succeeded in selilng all one million within a few months.
Maybe it's time for me to get back into unusual businesses.
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