Tuesday, April 3, 2007

StumbleUpon . . . Ads!

Here is today's funny business idea from Matt: StumbleUpon . . . Ads.

StumbleUpon is an awesome idea and product where you 'stumble' from one site to the next based on your own history of preferences and the preferences of like-minded others. StumbleUpon has a great business model where every so often in your sequential click stream you stumble upon a paid-inclusion site. Stumbleupon sells these at paid placements "starting at 5 cents per visitor".

But how much funnier would it be if every webpage that you stumbled upon was a pay per click ad served up by a third party ad-network? But wait, there's more! There is already a well-proven, analogous business model: the direct-nav page full of ads, excuse me, search results, useful links, etc. all of which lead to, wait for it, another page of ads, and another, and maybe another, too.

Relatedly, a number of bloggers, like Charlie O'Donnell, post somewhat funny 'free business ideas' periodically. Why is it that, these 'free business ideas' aren't usually any longer shots than, say, that blogger's day job, or that other company that just raised a round of 'smart money'?

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