Like the encorebeat website. Especially because I listen to music while playing poker. Are you going to incorporate pandora.com model of advertisements or how will you monetize it??

-----------------------------------------
My Idea.

Business Idea:

Creating a personal finance website that caters to gamblers and poker players both semi-pro and professional.

Reasoning: Like most of us who started out in poker we remember watching TV and the internet of these huge pots players won or some major tournament an unknown took down and thought this could be a great way to become well off. Then, for those who were able to build up a nice roll and overcome a long sample size of variance you decided to either take this venture on full time or are considering the shift to go full time while you work your 9-5.

I know the year I took off to travel to various countries to play in MTT’s and cash games I never understood th true costs that a poker player really incurs in order to make a decent living. Then I had my AH HA! Moment and realized never have I read about the other side of poker. Through the media, publications, or forums we mostly only hear about the balling out players do or the major scores they make but we don’t hear the aspect of playing poker as a business.

Some players come to poker from a finance background so they know everything when it comes to banking, taxes, investments ect but for those who don’t come from a finance background or don’t have a financial advisor/money manager they’re left to learn from peers or the internet.
Features:

My site will incorporate the following:

DAILY ARTICLES OF PERSONAL FINANCE FOR THE POKER PLAYER/gambler. Daily finance articles tailored to gamblers/poker players that talk about issues most important to them. (We all read Bloomberg, yahoo finance, ect but what if we had a site that niche’s your reading on finance to you the poker player?) Here are several titles of articles I have already written that I think would really help the everyday player:

• Why Poker players are no better than NBA players when it comes to managing their retirement?

• THE RAIL: (Interview pro/semi pro players who specialize online, MTT’s, or cash grinders about the cost of being a poker players and their investment plans.)


• Why your stable should have an advisory board like a public company??

• Why being a poker staker is like being a real estate investor…And it can be lucrative if done correctly..


• Your staking income is growing. Reinvest? Or diversify? Options for growing your staking income on and off the green felt.

• If you’re a professional poker player here is why you should have a financial advisor like any other professional athlete……or consider a robo-adivsor.

• Can I register myself as an LLC, C-corp, or any other structure to enjoy the tax benefits as a professional poker player??


• You have poker apps to record your play right!? Why don’t you have apps that track your bankroll for retirement? The 5 financial apps every professional poker player should have on their phone………….

• THE PRO, THE FISH, AND THE CPA: We sit down and interview various pro players, recreational players, and financial experts on how you should do taxes as a player.

• Lets talk insurance…Your family and your bankroll depend on it!

• Long Term Care & Insurance: How seasoned players can take care of their aging parents without breaking your own bankroll…..

• You just won a major tournament! Here’s what a financial advisor would tell you to do next!!!!

• Over/Under: How your poker style translates to your investment style? (This article talks about the best investment approach that would suit you based on how you play cards!)

The Tournament Player: Domestic bank? Or International? (Article covers the best banks available to park your money while you travel from country to country for MTT’s

• Credit or Cash: How the ALL cash poker player can build their credit score!

• GETTING RAKED AT THE BANK: We rate the best and worst banks/providers for poker players to exchange currencies for tournaments.

• When should I turn pro: A formula of the exact savings you need (to the penny!!) before you can be a professional poker player.

• Women are the rake: ARTICE: how you should manage joint finances while being a professional poker player in a relationship

• The 529/plan: How saving for your child’s education can help lessen the IRS’s grip on your poker bankroll…

• Poker players and liquidity!!! How much do you need? ARTICLE: talks about general investments that can earn a better rate of return on idle cash while keeping it virtually risk free.

• Currency futures. Learn to hedge your money when you decide to live overseas. (Articles talks about currency risk, hedging your bankroll if you have money parked in different countries)

• WSOP: house?, hotel?, shared? or car?: ARTICLE: We review the best websites for the traveling poker player in finding great deals to cut their expenses.

• The tortoise, the hare, and the millionaire: the retirement plans these 3 types of poker players should follow…..

PATENT PENDING CATEGORIZATION SEARCH ALGORITHM. Now traveling tournament players if you’re like me you have an Excel spreadsheet you keep that has the websites of the following:
1. Hotels/Motels (expedia.com ect.)
2. Car Rental/Vacation package
3. Currency Exchange providers
4. Coupon sites/special deals for the above

My idea is to allow for users to stop going to multiple sites to have the above handled and just go to the site where all this can be found. The way that it will work is the search algorithm will find savings opportunities unique to each user based on the location they plan to go. Some might say I can just go to priceline and find the cheapest flight, hotel, and car service with a couple clicks why do I need you? The answer to that is simple.

If I combine several more providers than the standard big names like expedia.com and priceline.com and also incorporate house sharing, B&B, room rentals sites this will help the poker player find better deals and compare.

Also for currency exchange providers I used to google the country/city where I was going to find a provider or just do it in the US before leaving. With this categorization algorithm we are able to find the best/cheapest providers local to the country/city you will be going to and show them to you with their contact information. Saves time and money.
In summation if you have heard of mint.com for finance this is that concept but for matters most needed by poker players/gamblers.


Why I think our service is needed:

As a former financial advisor I know about 60% of US households don’t have a financial advisor and mainly rely on friends and family for financial advice. With the emergence of robo-advisory platforms driving down the costs for investment management and financial planning people still need to know where to start. My idea is to provide gamblers/poker players with a starting point on providing financial education that’s most pertinent to them so they can approach their financial plan or financial planner with a better understanding.

How we make money: I am not going to go into the finances too much as the site will launch for beta in a month so I want to test out a few pricing points before we launch.

NEED HELP:

I would really love to hear feedback on what you like, don’t like or what I should add. I also would like to know if you would read some of the articles above to better your game when it comes to approaching poker as a business and what other topics I should include that you would like to read. Thanks in advance.

How about breakfast insurance?

market too small imo.

There are currently registered aprox 362,000 players who are registered from the top 10 sites.
Source*
http://www.pokerscout.com/
Now this could be a blend of inactive accounts or paper money players. But the fact remains depending on the pricing structure we don’t necessarily need to charge a subscription fee. We could operate like most sites through ad-revenue or third party payment referral plans.


If we go a step further and look at the publications that are the poker players trade journal you will see
Cardplayer.com has aprox 93k unique visitors monthly and its growing.
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/ca.../#.VL6wyEfF-VM

If you look at bluff.com they have over 50k unique visitors per month
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bluff.com

Pokerstars.com has 140k unique visitors alone each month that either play real or play money actively
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/po.../#.VL6xp0fF-VM


I get what you’re saying about a trade magazine or website for poker/gambler enthusiast being to niche but if you look at unique visitors who visit cardplayer.com, bluff.com, pokerdb.com and who also subscribe and renew fees for poker coaching sites the market is there. Also if we decide to forgo a subscription base model and just focus on driving advertisement revenue and take on mint.com’s model of receiving ‘referral’ fees when a third party website gets a hit or deal closed its very viable.

I do understand what you’re saying why would someone playing poker want to read about how to reduce their taxable income on a 5 minute article when they could read a random article on cardplayer.com or a 2p2 thread? If one user clicks on an article and maybe even goes to the affiliate site to accept a deal like a lower flight fare our site just got paid in two different ways in less than 10 minutes.

Twoplustwo.com alone generates 122k users per month that visit the site.
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/tw.../#.VL6zmUfF-VM

The poker community both recreational and professional is massive not just online but live. BF put a dent in the market for sure but a few placed articles in cardplayer.com or bluff.com or a partner program with a top stable will assist in marketing to get the name out. I have other marketing approaches but this was just to demonstrate that poker is not like a plumbing trade magazine where the market is small.

Not to mention fantasy draft has exploded the last year so these articles don't have to always be poker related they can also cater to gamblers like fantasy players. And the market is definitly there with 6.3MM visitors a MONTH! crazy
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/dr.../#.VL65s0fF-VM
This means that gambling community is there and once poker legislation is relaxed whenever that may be the fantasy money will make its way back to the poker eco-system.

I agree the numbers have to make sense though in order to get a piece of the traffic going to poker sites in order for the company to generate a healthy profit margin to pay the engineer and IT personnel.

This is an awesome thread. I have read 27 pages and it was interesting to hear the ideas in 2011.


I am from the United States but I have been to Europe quite a bit the past year. I am someone who always does my research before I do anything -- whether that is going to get a haircut, getting a massage or going to get breakfast. I use Yelp more than I probably should.

It's an awesome website that has helped me find places (restaurants mainly) that I otherwise wouldn't have found.

I feel like there is room in the market place for a better version of Yelp in Europe -- it seems like Yelp doesn't have the presence in Europe that it does in the United States. However, Yelp is trying to extend its reach into Europe by buying similar, smaller sites.

My idea is to have a similar review system where you can filter the reviewers based on various demographics. (Age, Gender, Nationality, Etc.)

This would lead to more targeted reviews. I would also use google translate to translate the reviews to other languages.

I would try to obtain a sense of community where users create their profiles, have their own blog, etc. I would want the reviewers to seem like a person as opposed to a nameless face who loved the baklava at the Greek place in London.

To incentivize people to leave reviews I would have monthly contests. The top 10 reviewers would compete in some challenge to see who would win a vacation to the city of their choice. (It would be a blind process so you wouldn't know where you ranked until the end of the month.)

The most upvoted review of the week would win a gift card to the restaurant of their choice. (or something similar)

Basically, I want to create an incentive system which leads different types of people to leave a review. I want the reviewers to feel like they have a chance of winning something for their time. Even if the reviewer's equity is only 1/10 of a penny it is a fun experience to try to win something!

In addition to the aggregate review system I would have paid reviewers who write detailed reviews on various places in the city. I guess if a reviewer builds a solid reputation they could eventually be paid to write articles on the website.

The thing I need to focus on is creating a fair review system that has the appropriate balance between positive and negative reviews.

I would need to think of more ways to mitigate adverse selection -- I think most businesses dismiss negative reviews by saying that the only people who leave reviews are those who weren't happy.

subbing

Mountain Dew Code Beige

A site with local merchants offering free birthday gifts.

The guy who started Hotel Tonight had a company that a bit of this kind of thing. It's a really easy platform for creating revenue, because those hotels will pay good affiliate money for reservations, and you can layer on advertising around other things to do in the area (bike tours, skiing, restaurants, whatever).

One tough part for you is going to be figuring out whether people really care about reviews on an age/gender/nationality basis, or whether there's some kind of psychographic profile that people relate to. Basically, what kind of filtering is actually going to lead to better results for travelers.

Then you have to figure out how to start building reviews. I know there are services out there that let you license user reviews, but that's going to require $$$ up front. Your other option will be the long slog of getting reviews by either reaching the traveler on your own or convincing the hotels to tell the travelers to use your site.

This business is going ahead now but I am interested to get some feedback/input onto the plan.

The model we are using means it is relatively low risk, in terms of start up costs, though it is high risk in the sense that I am unsure there is a market for this service.

The business is centered around the supply and installation of cost-saving, energy-efficient LED lighting, to domestic home owners in the UK.

We have a team of sales people that will go knocking door-to-door. It will be their job to educate the home owners of the benefits of switching to LED bulbs, in terms of savings on maintenance and running costs. And then hopefully make the sale and switch every bulb for it's LED equivalent, which will be in our vans somewhere on that street.

We get the bulbs at a really good price on a sale or return deal, and the sellers wage is largely commission based, though the wage structure for employees needs finalizing. On average we make $3.50 a bulb (80% mu whilst still being in line with retail), so the seller needs to be doing at least 2 or 3 an hour to cover his salary, if we were to pay him min. wage.

I initially wasn't sure if the employees should be salesy types with some electrical knowledge or the other way around. I've decided on getting candidates with more of an emphasis on sales as the electrical work isn't that difficult to learn.

What issues do you think I will be faced with when this gets rolled out?

The ones I predict are: People not caring enough to switch, people not wanting to be disturbed in their homes.

There are of course companies that sell LED bulbs, predominately online. But their sales efforts are non existent.

Longer term we also want to sell to small businesses, care homes and social housing associations. I am prepared to switch to the small business market very quickly should the domestic market not take to our service.

Thanks guys, any thoughts?

I like the idea, think the article part could be something I would read.
Still cant see it being huge, but possibly profitable though.

This is really just part of a business idea, not the complete recipe.

Currently, there are more than a million apps for the iPhone, and a slightly larger number of apps for Android. A small number of them -- basically lottery winners -- make a ton of money while the vast majority make very little or nothing. For example, there are thousands of ************ and dieting apps. If your weight loss app isn’t in, say, the top 20 list for that niche, it would be nearly impossible for consumers to find you. Name recognition is key.

Even if you manage to create a popular app (by spending tons on advertising or getting lucky and going viral), what then? How do you expand? You can use the brand equity you’ve generated to help launch a bunch of follow-up apps, but there’s risk, cost, and time involved. I’ve seen companies that created an app that made the company profitable for a while, only to fail later because the company’s second, third, fourth, .... app didn’t do as well.

One possibility is to create a franchise. As franchisor, you’d license out your app’s brand and intellectual property (software systems, trademarks, etc.) to franchisees in exchange for a flat fee plus royalties. This shifts risks and the headaches of software development from you to the franchisees, but still leaves you in ultimate control of the brand (you can impose app quality standards for franchisees), and a percentage of the upside potential. It would also reduce the number of competitors who will attempt to copy your idea independently, because it may be more cost effective for them to buy into your franchise than re-invent everything.

OK -- have at thee!

An app that makes more apps.

Will those apps themselves make more apps?

Stay tuned.

I'm pretty sure this idea is absolutely worthless, and not anything I'm expecting to profit from but here it is. I enjoy cooking tasty food, and appreciate making my own food rather than eating out, etc, however it is very impractical to cook for 1-2 people as cooking is so much more time efficient when cooking in large quantities. What I would like is some sort of community of cooks that facilitiated trading prepared meals. For example, Rather than tediously preparing 3-5 tedious meals, I make 20 servings or so of soup, and can then trade those servings for other meals throughout the day, apps/snacks/entrees/etc. As far as pairing up compatible cooks, it could be almost like a dating platform based on peer reviews or you could have a pinterest style page to see what kind of cooking styles/recipes/dietary requirements you may be into. I can see plenty of problems with this, I'm just wondering if this is even worth entertaining.

Sounds like the perfect front for burglars to get inside someone's house and case every room for burglary. I would never let any door to door salesman inside my house for this. Maybe it's different in the UK. If you are going to sell domestic I can't imagine door-to-door is the best way.

I'm not overly familiar with that market, but I did hear there was some legislation in the U.S. that might have some bearing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-o...al_legislation

No idea if there are similar laws for the UK, but if there are it might impact your ability to make money off that idea.

Jokes aside, this might actually work if the app is focused on a particular niche. After all, there are plenty of websites that help, say, small business owners create a website. An app that helps, say, small restaurants to create an app that lets their customers place orders could sell pretty well. I've seen apps that serve niches like small restaurants, but they're clearly branded as being independent ordering or reservation systems and don't look like apps created for one specific restaurant.

There are websites like Appery.io that helps people create apps, but they seem to be targeting software developers instead of small business owners. Also, there might be some advantages to developing the app directly on an actual mobile device instead of a web browser. I haven't checked to see if there are already apps that do what you're suggesting, though.

soundproof smartphone cases, because the NSA. and the prospect of some1 being able to stealthily launch Meerkat or an app like it is kind of terrifying.

can also have a deluxe model that blocks all signals so its like your phone w/o a battery w/o having to take out your battery. also because the NSA.

I remember seeing this thread years ago and thinking I'd never post an idea for the negative reasons in the OP but to be honest I've never pursued any of mine and don't have a clue how to so it's not like I'd lose out if A) my idea was good and/or B) it was stolen.

Apologies for the length and format of the post, written on my phone.

I have two totally unrelated ideas;

1) Ok this requires a little background. Bookmakers are everywhere but they aren't great. They take a vig or over round as it's known here and only offer bets they want. Added to that most don't allow winners etc
Exchanges are better but still take a vig and have a limited offering.

The idea (not fully formed) is based on prop betting, ie I bet with a friend that x will happen. There is no vig and we agree on the odds.
So a site called propbet.com for example. Users pay a small weekly/monthly sub and are then free to create their own bets or take other peoples bets. The bets themselves could be anything, imagine an eBay of betting.
The site could and likely should act as escrow and possibly verifies some/all bet results according to the terms the users have agreed on.
It could possibly take a small percentage of bet amounts instead of charging a subscription but that's basically a vig.

2) Again a little background. I'm one of the lucky 2% to suffer from a thing called psoriasis, for those who don't know it's symptoms are mainly red itchy plaques of skin. It's more complex than that but I'd have to write a book here to explain.
Anyway, one of the main treatments for it and other skin conditions is a thing called UVB, it's pretty much sun beds you stand in that have a specific lamp that emits narrowband UV radiation.
The machines/sun beds in existence now are monstrous and use massive fluorescent tubes. This makes them unaccessible to the general population plus they cost a bomb.

The idea is a collapsible or inflatable model that would use LED's rather than fluorescents to bring the price of a unit and the storage space required way down therefore make them a consumer product rather than something purchased mainly by medical institutions.

I don't think its exactly what you're looking for because I don't think they have escrow services and based on their video it seems more social in nature. http://youbetme.com/

A large issue with this would be liquidity. Betfair is the biggest exchange by far, but if you take a look outside of the main markets there is very little money splashing around.

@snowman yeah seems pretty similar, although all the bets are based on sporting events etc?
Also they aren't for money right, understandable as you run into licensing issues etc

@protagonist yep can see that being a big issue. Only thing I'd point out is that the low liquidity is mainly due to the markets being niche areas of certain events which no one really has an interest in.
In my idea the bets would be user created, like "I bet I can do more push-ups than you".
This bet could sit there as long as the creator wanted. I'd also envisage a communication aspect whereby prospective bettors could negotiate bets/terms/wager etc
If the bet never gets made no one would lose out

How about an Apple Pocketwatch?

A stationary bike or treadmill that dispenses food / alcohol proportional to the calories you burn.

been there, done that...conclusion: ppl be lazy...