Free ideas
This has two purposes: I have more ideas than I’ll ever want to use, so I wouldn’t mind if someone else did these for me. Also, ideas really are a dime a dozen. The real question is always, “Can you do it well?”.
A Segway rental service on the Las Vegas strip. You could rent or return it at stalls at most casinos. Hard to sell in the middle of summer days, but I bet this would be popular in spring/fall and summer nights.
WordPress.com for forums. There’s a strong need for forum software with good UI (I’m sure good examples exist, but they’re not widespread). If you could offer easy transfer to a new service, with hosting options, I bet a lot of sites would be interested. The things that happen currently when forum maintainers try to upgrade aren’t pretty.
A fund raising service for businesses and other endeavors. People would be able to pay in amounts as little as $5 or $20, in exchange for some set return like company shares or their name on a brick. But if total donations don’t reach some set minimum needed to make the project work within 6 months (or some other time period set up front) all donations are refunded. It’s sort of an automated escrow service.
An ex-co-worker and I came up with this one: a mobile photography studio. We were thinking street fair tent, but lots of spaces would work. Portable backdrop, lights, some funny props, a digital SLR, laptop, and photo printer. A 2 or 3 person team could hand off small numbers of prints while people wait, and take larger orders to be mailed.
My only request is that if you try any of these, let me know how it goes.
A German site, Sellaband.com allows you to buy a share of an indie band for $10. Once the band reaches $50k, it produces a record and the revenues are shared between the band and the donors.
I’ve seen it also done with more philanthropic endeavors–sponsoring a small business in swaziland– but never for commercial gain like that.
On the site I run, I’ve thought about having a section where businesses pitch their ideas and members of the site can buy equity or lend money in small increments.