11 Undiscovered Website Ideas to Steal and Make You Rich
It’s no secret: great ideas make the web spin around.
Community-based sites and web applications are rapidly becoming hot property. Young entrepreneurs are making startling amounts of money with simple ideas that connect people and places. Fancy becoming one of them?
The dream is a simple one: with careful planning and some spare time, someone just like you can take a smart concept, add some glitz and make a fortune. But where have all the hot ideas gone? Why are we seeing spin-offs, rip-offs and mash-ups instead of great new concepts? Where are all the rubies in the dust?
It turns out, they’re right where you’re standing. You just need to look a little harder. Here are 11 under-represented site ideas to steal today and make you rich tomorrow. Be quick! The clock’s already ticking.
1. The Reverse Job Board
The mini pitch: “Buy and sell work online.”
What it is: You know all those job boards you see littered around the web? This is a job board flipped on its head. Think of it as a “work wanted” board. Instead of employers posting job offers, this is a place for service providers to post requests for work.
How it works: Designers, developers, writers, and anyone else wanting work can post their request, together with the percentage or fixed fee they’d pay to someone providing a lead.
Why it’s hot: More people than ever are turning to the web as a source of work. Sometimes it’s very hard to find it, or very time-consuming to browse offers and make pitches. Wouldn’t it be great if people could find work for you? And imagine getting paid just for referring someone you know who needs a new website or logo design.
Where the money is: Take a commission when work is successfully placed, or charge a monthly fee to either buy requests or see contact details.
2. Community Consulting
The mini pitch: “Yahoo Answers for website owners.”
What it is: A place where website owners can pay for advice and get opinions from a wide community of experts, dabblers and end-users.
How it works: Website owners use credits to post a screenshot with a link to their site, together with a list of their goals. Community consultants give advice, and credits are dished out between them accordingly. Credits can be cashed in or spent on questions.
Why it’s hot: Opinions and advice are essential to improving your site. This concept would shift the balance from whopping consultancy fees for one person’s opinion to micro-payments and group-thinking. It also puts a value on your own opinions and sagely advice at long last!
Where the money is: Website owners buy credits. Perhaps it costs 25 credits for them to submit their site for community consulting. You could take 5 credits, and get them to spread the remaining 20 between those who respond.
3. Online Debating
The mini pitch: “Wikipedia for arguments”.
What it is: Arguments litter every forum and web hangout. They’re very rarely controlled, and scarcely intellectual, insightful, or conclusive. There must be space for an online debating site that was well-managed and moderated.
The nearest I’ve seen is Squidoo’s “Hey Monkey Brain,” but I’m sure there’s space for more.
How it works: Suggest an argument. Pick a side. Build your case. Encourage the responses of others.
Why it’s hot: Everyone loves expressing their opinion. Your task is to help them do it in a controlled way, and one that you can monetize!
Where the money is: There’s a possibility that people would pay a small fee to start a debate, but it’s far more likely that most of your income would come from affiliate sales and carefully matched advertising.
4. Web Concierge Services
The mini pitch: “Your online butler.”
What it is: Ever wanted to achieve something online, but couldn’t be bothered to spend ages searching around or filling in all those forms to book flights and cinema tickets?
How it works: You make a request by email, text or voicemail to your online butler. It could be anything at all — perhaps, “two tickets for Die Hard 8 at my local cinema tonight”. Your butler dutifully acts on your request. There are automated services that help with this out there already, but an efficient, human-powered offering would stand head-and-shoulders above the rest.
Why it’s hot: Outsourcing and personal virtual assistants are hot topics right now. A market-leading web concierge service could be big business. Think of all the high-fliers, entrepreneurs, and other busy people out there. You could start one service for the super-rich end of the scale as well as one for other busy folks with less cash to splash.
Where the money is: Monthly subscription fees or per-use charges are the way to go here.
5. Live Auction Sites
The mini pitch: “Buy it now on steroids.”
What it is: Online auction sites are great, but few of them capture the same adrenalin rush and buzz that you get from a real auction room. I think there’s still space for a well-executed live auction site that makes listing and bidding super-simple.
How it works: Imagine a list of iPhones for sale — you can only bid on the one at the top, and it’s only available for minutes instead of days. Bids are live and backed by escrow, and when the top item’s been sold, the ones below float upwards and a new item becomes active and open to bids.
Why it’s hot: As a seller, it’s becoming increasingly complicated to list things online, generate buzz, and make a quick sale. A simple live online auction site could solve all that.
Where the money is: Make it free to list and just charge a commission for successful sales. You need to think carefully about how you’ll guarantee that all bids (and items!) are genuine. This could be by asking users to deposit funds into their account prior to bidding, or some other way.
6. Skill Trading
The mini pitch: “Swap skills instead of bills!”
What it is: An online hub to swap your skills for those of others. Instead of paying for services, you simply swap your own.
How it works: Need something doing? Post a “help wanted” ad, together with a list of your own skills and examples of your work.
Why it’s hot: There are thousands of highly-skilled designers, developers, writers, illustrators, musicians and other talented folk littered across the web. But right now, there’s no good way to connect them. Provided you offer a way to mediate any disputes, and ensure that trades are fair and backed by guarantee, a skill trading site could be big business!
Where the money is: Charge monthly fees, or a smaller fee per swap request. Or simply charge for hopeful applicants to get contact info.
7. Speedy book, DVD, game and CD sales
The mini pitch: “Sell anything with a barcode. Fast.”
What it is: Do you have a stash of books, games, DVDs or CDs lying around that you’re not using any more? It seems a shame, doesn’t it? A site or piece of software that enabled scanning of barcodes using a web camera in order to quickly list books could save hours and make megabucks.
How it works: Sign up, scan your books and name your price. Job done! This could work as a website, or it could be a standalone application that linked in with something like Amazon’s Marketplace.
Why it’s hot: Thousands of people have stacks of unused books, games and other items. They’re just too lazy to list them! That’s where you come in.
Where the money is: Take a small commission of book sales. (Or charge a flat fee for the software if you go the stand-alone app route.)
8. A Read It Later Site
The mini pitch: “The web’s reading list.”
What it is: A community reading list for the web. Feed readers are great, but they’re not very sociable, and adoption by non-tech heads is pretty poor. What the web needs is something that everyone can use and understand — an internet reading list!
A site that combines reading, archiving and sharing is long overdue, and would be much more accessible a concept for your technically-challenged friends and family.
How it works: Ever come across a great article, but didn’t have time to read it? You could bookmark it, but you’ll probably forget about it pretty soon. Wouldn’t it be great if you could mark a page to “read it later” and have it stored in an online reading list?
Then, once a week, you could take an hour out of your day and read through everything, tag it with categories, and check out the week’s charts of the most-read items.
Why it’s hot: Feed readers are hot. Community-based sharing of links is hotter. Combine the two concepts for an explosive mix! Yes, there’s a Firefox plugin that does this, but we need something with wider reach.
Where the money is: This is another concept best exploited via advertising. Who says advertising isn’t a good basis for a business model? It’s worked rather well for Google and Digg seems to be doing OK too!
9. A Live House Price Index
The mini pitch: “What’s your house worth right now?”
What it is: A live house price site backed by a powerful data-model, where house prices are overlaid on a map. There are already sites that do this to some extent, and the market is crowded. But if you could put out the first site to offer truly live, by-the-second house prices you’d be swimming in cash.
How it works: The data modeling would be very complex. You’d have to rely on a community-based element to correct your prices, and build a reliable estimation system based on previous house sales, local trends, market effects and the opinion of your users.
Why it’s hot: Every home owner loves to know what their place is worth. For property investors with large portfolios, the opportunity to track the value by-the-second would be incredible valuable. Furthermore, estate agents could probably benefit from a people-powered market index to help with their own sales and estimation.
Where the money is: The possibilities to monetize this concept are endless. Think private house sale commission, affiliate sales, estate-agent and property investor subscriptions, advertising, community ads, and more!
10. Real-Time Public Billboards
The mini pitch: “Your ad anywhere. Right now.”
What it is: A network of billboards, news stands and projectors linked to a single website that allows regular people just like you to place adverts in public spaces. Think of the “one million pixel” site but outdoors.
How it works: You register, upload your advert, choose a location, hit go and see a live webcam feed of your ad displayed in any public space in the world.
Why it’s hot: The cost of billboard advertising is prohibative to most small businesses and individuals. A public, global, mini-billboard network of ads for regular people and businesses that updates at the click of a mouse could earn megabucks. Make it work, and I’m sure Google would want a word with you too.
Where the money is: Simply charge a flat fee or monthly recurring cost to place an ad. You could split your electronic billboards and projectors into small segments, or sell the whole space or network to one advertiser.
11. Website Sales
The mini pitch: “The place to buy and sell websites.”
What it is: If you’ve got an established website to sell, where do you go? There is still no clear-cut market leader in this field. What’s stopping you from filling that gap?
How it works: List your website for sale at either a flat fee or auction rate. Include screenshots, traffic, pagerank and earnings info and watch the money roll in!
Why it’s hot: Domain name sales are big business. But selling a website for what it’s really worth, or buying an online property in a trusted way is still rather tricky.
Where the money is: Take a commission from successful sales in return for offering escrow and listing services, or charge for each listing.
Daniel Scocco on March 11, 2008 
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Great ideas. One of my sisters and I had once discussed something along the lines of #4, starting it with each of us taking a side, and seeing where it went from there. That’s as far as we ever went with the idea, as she was in college and never up to the details.
Maybe someone else will do it.
Great ideas, some are already done and others need to be drawn out more. I have tons of ideas myself, but I lack the time to do them all. Plus marketing them is so difficult.
I love the live auction and the billboard one.
If the billboards are electronic, you could rotate the ad every 30 or 60 seconds and keep to allow more advertisers at cheaper rates.
#8 A Read It Later Site: Already being done by Instapaper.com
Some really interesting out of the box ideas, I especially like the instant billboard one. Might have to steal that
Actually I like the last one as it really worked for my blog
Lots of interesting ideas. I would definitely pay for #4. Don’t want to build it myself, because I hate dealing with personnel! That’s why I would want someone else to do it for me.
Great ideas!
I’m not sure any are up my alley, but they are certainly very hot. I’d love to hire a concierge service if one were affordable to a middle-income single mom!
Thanks for the article,
Sherri
Very informative interesting post. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Stumbled and bookmarked.
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
Well, great ideas. How about a community forum which maps and rates the various places in a particular city, places which are generally visited by us almost everyday.
Something like online gossip.
In Number 10, “prohibative” should be “prohibitive”.
The Future of Affiliate Marketing is here!!
A Must Have Software for work smarter not harder type of people!
http://www.theconversionprophet.com
Nice list different from many “101 whatever scam” listings.
Terminology software
Aren’t these areas saturated? How much would it cost to support each and get them up an running? You’d have to be a web developer not an average joe. Right? I would love to know the quick and easy way to start any one of these if it would bring in revenue.
Ok let me say before I say anything else……I am not above 18 years old, and do not do anything illegal to make money in such manners listed above.
Do not mind my grammer, please, as I am in a rush.
About the last question
“Aren’t these areas saturated? How much would it cost to support each and get them up an running? You’d have to be a web developer not an average joe. Right? I would love to know the quick and easy way to start any one of these if it would bring in revenue.”
….aren’t these areas saturated….(not sure what that means, don’t have time to look it up)
Regarding your other question, how much would it cost to get any one of these things up and running…… 100% free. I actually have a couple of sites from a couple of different hosting companies, that give you the ability to make your own site 100% free, no strings attached. I have made numerous sites that are hosted for free and were not so hard to get up and running.
I am not above 18 years old, (anyone could do any of these) I do not know any computer language, but am a person who speaks English fluently (which is a must, if you want to get onto the right track of business, America is the worlds leading Economy).
Get yourself to x10hosting.com
Make yourself a free account, go to the control panel you’ll know what it is, once you get yourself an account. Click on fantastico. ( I understand you won’t listen to someone under 18 years old, but trust me just do it).
Once fantastico is opened up click on any type of site you like, that would fit would you want to make, install it. And learn how to read English or comprehend it more if you do not already.
From there, your on your own. With your new site. It is 100% free, I am not an advertiser, just a kid.
About these ideas, I actually go around site after site on google, looking for website ideas. I have sold sites online, on my forum, I have developed my own guides to making money online, (might be too expensive but costs $ 500 USD……100% money back guaranteed: all profits made are payed for by taxes, if purchase has been made please feel free to ask for my tax Identification number).
2 of the sites above I liked the ideas of them. And making them currently. just go to x10hosting.com….and read what it says.
Hope you get started, I am 16 years old and trust me, I have made hundreds of dollars online, through sites like this.
Reason I may be doing this…..I have always been told I am too young to do this or that, I am not too young, I love making money, (don’t worry my social life is nothing jeopardized).
contact me via lpresident@hotmail.com…..if you have any questions, though I do not check my mail except once a week for a couple of hours, since there are way too many.
Thankyou, I Am Lagron, from soon to be, Lagron Corp, (yes owned by a 16 year old).
The online debating one has already been done… http://flamedebate.com/
#11 is already taken. http://thecine.org
Really great ideas. Thanks for sharing them. Loved the billboard one. Might try to do that someday.
Hmmmm. Food for thought. However, nothing is really jumping out at me like a must do!
The-Boss
TheBossReportCard.com
Im kinda confused
Here’s another idea for someone to steal: A recipe/ingredient database website.
Now, there are plenty of recipe websites (cooks.com, allrecipes.com, and so on). And on most of these websites, you can do a keyword search for part of the recipe’s title. On one or two of these websites, you can even search the database for all the recipes that contain a particular ingredient. If any one of these websites took this search tool a few steps farther, however, it would instantly sweep away its competitors.
I have, on countless occasions, found myself in a situation where I’m ready and willing to cook a meal for myself or my friends, but I’m at a total loss for ideas. This is particularly problematic when my pantry is looking bare. I might spend 30 minutes to an hour flipping through a cookbook for ideas (many of which I have to dismiss because I’m missing key ingredients), and the recipe websites that are currently available are really no different from my cookbooks in a practical sense.
Imagine, however, an online recipe database where someone could type in as many as 20 or 30 ingredients that they have on hand, and have a long list of recipe suggestions returned to them! If, for example, I have some basic staples (oil, flour, sugar, eggs), but not much else (a can of beans, a bunch of onions, a few pounds of potatoes, a jumble of condiments and spices, and a stray beer), chances are, I’ll say “the hell with it” and order pizza. However, with those few ingredients, I could make beer bread, savory potato pancakes, french fries, homemade pasta, potato salad with homemade mayonnaise, Native American fry-bread, traditional Japanese tea cakes with sweetened bean paste, potato dumplings, cupcakes…and undoubtedly many, many other items. If websites such as allrecipes.com could implement a more advanced search tool, it would be quite simple to type in the few ingredients you have on hand, hit enter, and wait for the results to roll in! This would be especially popular among adventurous cooks who’d like to try out some new things, i.e. regional dishes.
There would be plenty of ways to build on this idea, too. The website could offer - for a fee, probably - for someone to build a permanent profile where they could save their on-hand ingredients in an “online pantry.” It may be helpful to add in a few advanced-search tools, so that people can indicate what sort of equipment they have on hand (range, oven, grill, mixer, food processor, blender, etc). Finally, what about a “substitution” feature? If a recipe calls for brown sugar and you have none - but you do have white sugar and honey, you can mix these ingredients in the proper proportion to simulate brown sugar. Baking powder can be simulated with baking soda and cream of tartar. Ketchup can be simulated with, at a minimum, tomato paste, sugar, and vinegar. The search page could include an “include results with substitutions” option to generate more results.
These searches would be complex, so they’d need a lot of processing power, but that’s really the only downside I can see. A lot of money could be made off of the advertising (again, you’d blow your opponents out of the water), and a few of these features could be made available to paid subscribers only.
How ’bout it?
Got any other ones? lol
it has the potential of my space…….international……vanity
just when me and my friend discussing ideas had reached at stage where we would have either beaten up each other or some else around us, out of frustration, this article came as a welcome change. Cool ideas and thanks for helping us not indulge in sinful acts.
I’m not sure how someone from Africa is going to sell me tickets for my local cinema in AMsterdam or London, and charge me for that, but I really liked the idea #4. #11 is my favourite
I think I’m gonna do it 
Thanks man !
I forgott to mention my business. Here is something that you could do until you have enough money for your online business http://www.az-cleaningservices.com/
Not bad ideas. I also suggest to check out this site: http://badass-website-ideas.blogspot.com
I founded a reasonably good website based on bloke’s idea.
I lovd this idea abt skill trading.. nice one ! thinking of trying that one..
Thank you
I have numerous ideas that are better than these. But i dont know how to get them off and running and also i feel that its not safe to tell anyone about these ideas because someone will steal them. If anyone can help please send me and Email and hey maybe we can work together and make millions.
or right back on this blog……
Dan, I think this is a common problem for people who get good ideas. In order to get them off the ground one has to have a certain level of executive-type skill as well. And this is not so common. But here is something to think about - idea thieves are plenty, but the dangerous ones usually don’t get original ideas (and need a constant source to steal from). So the ones to be afraid of are the ones we work with, an immediate boss, for example. If you don’t know how to get your ideas off and running then it will also be difficult for idea thieves who hardly know you. Wow, that was profound. Good luck
Great ideas dude!
Hey Dan,
I’m interested in listening to your ideas and have always wanted to build my own site and start up my own company. Is there an email or something I can contact you with so that we can talk? Let me know.
#10 is doable with some digital projectors and the sides of buildings in the city, and even maybe barns too.
Big possibilities there.
very doable.
I own 6 sites and only have one published now… this may be the idea I was looking for.
I’m on it.
could somebody please clarify to me some of these ideas?
Im guessing that im not the only one that doesn’t get these clearly… So I’ll post my interpretation for each.. And if I’m wrong please email me at yguinor@gmail.com… Or post here.
1. People that are looking for a job put up their resume instead of employers putting wanted ads.
2. Website owners have a forum where they can talk about their site and get community consulting and tips…
3. Users choose an existing topic or create their own, pick a side, and argue in an orderly, controlled manner?
4. This one drove me crazy.. Everyone was mentioning how amazing this would be… But I simply don’t get the idea.. Who is this buttler? Is it someone from the website’s team? (in which case the idea is almost undoable.. Due to lack in manpower and possibly reliability)… Is it some other user? A computer? Help!
6. Swapping skills. You use your special skills/time to do something for
6. someone and they use theirs tohelp you?but still have to pay the site??
5. Sunny clear. People post items for sale.. People online bid in real time… Combination of ebay and a real auction…
7. BArcodes are different in different places… And all the items will need to be added to the database beforehand…
8. Read it later? Take all the week’s interesting reading material and read it on the same place.. Nice and clear..
9. You upload your house… The area.. The rooms etc. And a well calculated database that works on a base of trial and error gives you the house’s estimated price (according to the current market) in a matter of seconds… Seems very tricky and undoable… Kudos to whoever succeeds… It’ll be a real money tree..
10. I seriously don’t get this one…
A site that is somehow linked to all the bilboards around the world and when you upload your ad to the site it automatically sends it to the billboards and you could somehow see a webcam showing you your ad being shown on a billboard on the other half of the world??? Where would one get the authority to control the existing billboards.. Let alone create your own global network of billboards… Maybe I got this wrong… Contact me to clarify!! Please!
11. Buy and sell sites? This is easy to do, quite fun to set up and very profitable… Just the way I like it.
Overall this is an amazingly well thought out list, you thought outside the box, and came up with nice results.. Im gonna attempt a combination of these.. I’ll be sure to send a link when (and if) I’m done..
Thank you!
Ps: sorry for mixing up 5 and 6.. Writing this on an iPhone… No copy-paste…
Hi everyone,
I’ve just finished what I hope (don’t we all) is the next big thing called Requestfunds (http://www.requestfunds.com). It’s a website to let ordinary people like you and me ask for donations for whatever cause you have, a sickness, debt, money for travel whatever. I programmed it myself in ASP.Net with SQL Server backend. It’s running in a shared hosted environment. My skills and qualifications are a plenty from teaching computer programming to my current day job as a web programmer for Geddes Group programming the Anne Geddes website (http://www.annegeddes.com).
I’m writing here to help those who have some great ideas but don’t have the skills to implement those ideas. I’d love to work with you on some sort of mutual agreement that we share the business 50/50 or whichever… a man has to earn a living right?
On another note that got me was how do u market your website etc if you don’t have money or there are plenty of competition out there?
My response to this and what I am in the process of doing myself, is make sure your website is well formed. What I mean by this is that you do exactly what you say you will do for the customer, offer them clean user interfaces, fast loading pages, good feedback and customer support features and so on. Make it pleasant for them when they arrive and smile as they leave your site. To get your brand out there adopt a link exchange system. There is plenty of info on google about what this is but essentially it is a system of putting your website link on somebody elses website in exchange for you to put there link on your website. The main benefits is that it is free, you grow your brand organically and you only have people coming to your site who are genuinely interested in your service or product (why would they click the link otherwise?). Your page ranking will increase also with search engines which is there highest form of indexing.
Oh and I like idea #4 too
Hmmm, I’m already seeing the database tables now! :p
For the concierge service I would do it like this:
1) Portal based where concierges from around the world sign up for free to be notified on incoming concierge requests to which they then bid upon - the lowest bid may not necessarily be the winner, obviously things like location will play a part, time to deliver the goods (e.g. tickets) etc.
2) The end user requiring the goods pays a monthly subscription fee to use the service
2) New users can search and submit concierge requests and have them bidded on by concierges to which they can see the results but to accept a concierges bid they must subscribe to the service, no pay, no use (remove your hand and step away from the cookie jar sir!)
3) The concierge operates as a portal and takes no part in the exchange of goods or payments between both parties. The concierge service is responsible for maintaining the integrity of its users and services not the exchange of goods. That must be handled by the parties involved. In other words, if a bid for something is accepted then the two parties must decide for themselves as to how they want to pay each other and when and how the goods are going to be delivered, not the company.
This last point keeps everything clean and the boundaries clear for the concierge portal provider and its end users.
I’m like this page. I wanna start an online business. “The place to buy and sell websites.” is already done on adstrada.com. I was thinking of something similar a couple of years ago. If I start something similar, what should I do to make it successful? what could I do different?
Cheers,
Jake
Hi Rob,
I could have a use for your work. A good idea. Implementing good websites can be costly & not everyone can do their own.
Will try to mail you via your website.
Hi Rob,
Just tried your site but no password to enter. Any way you can put a contact email address on this site ? Thanks