Every now and then, I get an idea to start a business. It consumes me for the better part of a day or two. I can’t stop thinking about how great it would be and why it’s such a good idea. Then I finally start thinking about implementing the idea, and my world comes crashing down.
I don’t have the money or time to start a new business. Right now I’m building this blog and doing everything I can to make Thousandaire a profitable, sustainable entity. Another business would take time, money, and passion that I don’t have for all the ideas that pop in my head. Then it hit me; maybe one of my readers can do it.
And thus, the “Start This Business” series is born. Every now and then, I will post a real business idea that I believe would be a profitable venture, but I don’t have the means to execute the idea. If you have the time, money, and entrepreneurial spirit, you are welcome to take one of these ideas and run with it. Then when you become a billionaire, if you want to send me some kickbacks for helping you out, I will graciously accept them.
If you don’t want to start a business (or just don’t trust any of my business ideas) then feel free to read a look and give me your opinion. I’m curious to know if you think I have some good ideas or if I’m just a pretty face and a marginally talented musician with air between my ears.
Start This Business: Video Game Swap
I bought Portal 2 last week and played it all weekend. I beat the game and I’m done with it. It was fun, but it’s definitely not something I would ever want to play again. I want to get rid of the game while it’s still new and relatively valuable, but unfortunately there isn’t a good place to do that.
Sure, there are tons of places to resell video games. I can go to my local Gamestop and they might give me $2.41 of store credit. I can try to sell online at Amazon, eBay, or Half.com, but none of those places is known as THE place for video game selling, so you have all the video game buyers and sellers spread all across the entire web. Plus, what if I would rather trade my game then sell it?
There would be three ways for the customers to use the site. The first is a peer to peer selling site (similar to half.com) where they set a price and wait for a buyer. The second would be an option to just sell your game directly to the company for a much lower price (similar to Gamestop). The third would be the swap option (unlike anything available).
Monetizing the first two things would be no different than how Half.com or Gamestop do it. Let the people sell to each other and take a small fee, or buy the games for dirt cheap prices and sell them for more. For the swap, you could charge some kind of fee like $1 per swap or $3 for unlimited monthly swaps. Customers pay the shipping and everything, so you are just making money for connecting Person A to Person B.
It’s Genius… I Think
If this website existed today, I would totally be using it right now to sell or trade Portal 2. Instead, I’m just writing a blog post about it. It’s really just taking two established business models that already work, adding a third that is brand new, innovative, and awesome, and then lumping them all together. It creates one central hub for buying, selling, and trading video games.
So there’s a million dollar idea. Whether you’d make $1 million with it or lose $1 million, I can’t say for sure. I do know that I would love to use this service if it existed. What do you think?
EDIT: One of my readers brought Mooch to my attention. They basically offer everything I wanted with one small problem: they don’t have enough users. I put Portal 2 on there and as far as I can tell, not one single person wants it. That shows me that people aren’t using the site, because it’s a very popular new game. Now the question is, how would you advertise this thing, and how much money would you spend? They have the infrastructure in place but not the customer base. I think they need to connect with video game bloggers and youtubers. What about you?
EDIT 2: Doing some of my own research, I found Goozex. This is another video game swap site. I don’t like the interface as much as Mooch, nor do I really like how it’s not really a trading site (you essentially trade your game for points, and then use those points to buy other games). While I’m not a huge fan of how it works, this site actually does have a decent customer base and plenty of options for trading. Lesson learned: search harder for a business to see if it exists before posting a “new idea” to my site. I’m dumb.
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Swap.com is one big marketplace where a subsection is video games.
Might want to try that and see how it plays…
Thanks for sharing that site, it’s very interesting and pretty close to what I was looking for. The problem is they are spread so thin with offering books, music, movies and games. I doubt they will ever be a central hub for any one of those things because they are trying to hit everything.
I tried to look up Portal 2 for PS3 and it’s not even in their system. That’s obviously a deal breaker for me as that’s the only thing I want to trade.
The website I envision would be devoted entirely to video games, and maybe even have other things like video game reviews and things. I think it’s very important to find a niche instead of trying to please everyone.
Have you seen the site, www.mooch.com?
That’s it! It has everything I want except a large user base of people to trade with. I’ll update the article with that in here. Now they just need to market their site and get more people in there. Trading only works when you have other people to trade with
Hey guys,
I started Mooch.com and I’m glad you’ve discovered it. We’re working hard on ways to market the site to a much bigger audience. Feel free to contact me anytime with suggestions or feedback. Thanks for the mention here on the Blog Kevin!
Cheers,
Jonathan Balser
My email is jb@mooch.com. 🙂
I sent you an email. I hope your site starts growing and I can find someone to trade Portal 2 with. 🙂
Mooch.com is interesting…could be a winner if it gets over the catch 22 of needing people to bring more people.
In the long-haul, physical copies of videogames are probably on their way out, but there’s still plenty of opportunity until then!
Yeah, as the technology improves I expect we will be downloading video games in the future. But right now, they are on discs and people love them
I think rental is a much easier option. Did you check Gamefly? I think it’s similar to Netflix.
You’ll need a huge user base to get good selections.
Gamefly is expensive. I only get 3-4 games a year. Gamefly is like $20 or $30 a month. I’m hoping if I find a good trading website, I can just buy one game and trade it for the new ones I want. Then it’s just a $50 one time investment and I keep trading up. Not sure if it will work, but I’m hoping.
You only play 3-4 games per year, yet you want to trade the one game that you have? How about this, Kevin, stagger your games like me such that by the time you get your game its old news. I can’t wait to play Call of Duty Black Ops! In a few more months it’ll be less than $30. haha
That’s an interesting idea. The problem is there are so few games that I ever want to play. I have no interest in Call of Duty or most of the popular games. I need a different kind of game like Portal 2 or Heavy Rain.
Check out switchgames.com
This one looks like the best of the bunch. Some marketing genius needs to get involved with one of these websites and make it take off. I think there’s a huge, untapped market for this.
Gamefly is dumb. Rambo has it and they never send you anything on your list that you remotely would like. I mean, obviously he wants to play it because it’s on his list, but it’s not one of the top games, if that makes any sense. ANd there is usually such a long hold time, it’s a bit silly.
Really?
First, you actually bought Portal 2?
Second, you actually have the patience and mindset to beat it in only a few days? My first taste in Portal was through the Orange Box set, that I purchased for only $19 a year after it came out. Portal just seemed to damn difficult. Required too much concentration that I was ready to give.
How about playing some really games, like Mass Effect or Vegas?
I’ll see you and destroy you in real MAN games over Xbox Live (ONUB), if I ever decide to pay the $50 to re-instate it.
Xbox Live? I’m way too cheap to pay for online gaming. That’s why I have a PS3 (without a PS network right now, but you get what you pay for I guess).
I’m not much of a video game player. I like stories more than anything. My favorite game was Heavy Rain because it was more of an interactive movie than a video game. I’m sure you would destroy me in one of those shooter games. Except Halo. I’m pretty good at Halo 3.