Crazy Ideas but Viable Home Businesses

When starting a business—whether it’s home-based, web-based or a brick and mortar—you must be serious about your endeavor. It requires a lot of time, commitment, money and heart and soul to get it off the ground and then keep it running—and sometimes even all that’s not enough.

But putting all seriousness aside, the 2009 Top Ten Wackiest home-based businesses in the StartupNation Home-Based 100 prove you can actually have a legitime business built around a wacky business idea, and you can have a blast every step of the way.

Nathan Davis and Edgar Kim, founders of Reserve a Spot in Heaven and sister site Reserve a Spot in Hell won this year’s Wackiest category in the Home-Based 100. They actually started their home-based businesses as somewhat of a joke. “We’re pretty goofy guys and we were trying to think of a funny product we could sell on a website,” Davis explains. “Inspired by the numerous novelty gift websites selling stars and [property] on the moon, we came up with selling reservations in Heaven. It was purely random.”

That’s not to say they didn’t take things seriously when they got started in 2007. Just as any startup, the friends had to think about their websites, marketing, packaging and more. “Honestly, though,” Davis admits, “we didn’t think people would actually buy it, but we knew it would be a viral idea.”

CATCHING ATTENTION

Having a unique product with no competitors gave Davis and Kim a significant advantage, and just as they suspected, word spread. “We got our first sale two weeks after launching the site with zero marketing,” Davis says. Reserve a Spot in Heaven actually came first, but they launched Reserve a Spot in Hell two months later to meet demand. No joke! “Hell was highly requested,” he says, though Heaven still sells more “reservations”.

Selling reservations to Heaven and Hell, which come in the form of a plane ticket, certificate, ID card and guidebook, is outright ridiculousness and pure hilarity—which is exactly why it caught the attention of so many people. But Davis and Kim also knew their ideas would be a hit “because religion is a sensitive topic for a lot of people, so it sparks controversy.” Their Seattle-based businesses have seen a lot of skeptics, but “the haters are the ones that make us the most money,” Davis admits. “[They] tell their friends about how insane we are and it just spreads from there.”

ALL ABOUT THE EDUCATION

Though Rob Ludlow relies on a lot of word-of-mouth for his chicken enthusiast website, BackYardChickens, a 2009 Top Ten contender in the Wackiest category, he also uses his skills in product management, web technology, community development and internet marketing to boost interest and traffic. Just like Reserve a Spot, BYC has the wacky factor working for it. However, educating the customer is equally important for Ludlow’s home-based business—one that may not be taken seriously at first read.

Contrary to popular belief, he’s not actually selling chickens. “Our job is to raise awareness of how relatively easy and inexpensive it is to raise your own small flock of [chickens],” Ludlow explains. “People are looking for ways to get involved in the sustainable-living, grow-local movement. Raising backyard chickens provides the millions of people who live in urban and suburban settings to participate without completely changing their lifestyle or their zip code.”

Ludlow was actually a visitor to the web community in 2004 during a search for information on the topic. He became a regular visitor, until 2007 when he took over the site and relaunched it that year. As a San Francisco Bay Area resident who owns backyard chickens, he’s merely spreading the word about something near and dear to his heart—well, five actually, all hens—but that also contributes to a greater good. Says Ludlow, “We’re resolving misconceptions about chickens as pets and are educating people on how they can have a pet that makes them breakfast.”

TRUTH OF THE MATTER

For Marsha Hill and her Huntington Beach, California, nitpicking business, education is essential. No, you don’t hire her to nag at your husband or criticize your nemesis. As the founder of Lice’n Easy, Runner Up in the Wackiest home businesses of 2009, she actually picks nits, the eggs of lice, out of peoples hair. While this may make the average person cringe, Hill takes great pride in her service and actually went from a glamorous career in fashion to one in the not-so-glamorous market of lice.

The nature of a home-based business like this, requires education at three levels: Hill must educate people on the existence of such service providers, what it is she actually does and how this remedy is the only successful way to cure head lice. After seeing her co-worker’s family go through a horrendous bout of head lice, she dug deeper (no pun intended) and “found a calling to relieve families of this nuisance,” she explains. “The more research I did, the more I realized that people are so misinformed about taking care of head lice. And there are so many myths and stigmas attached to them.” She spends a lot of time talking to and educating parents, school nurses, doctors and government officials.

Whether it’s an unfamiliar topic like Hill’s or a crazy concept like Davis’, constant discussion is a must for many of the home-based businesses in our Wackiest category. While the names of many of them might result in puzzled looks or muffled snickers—like CelebritySpouses, a social network for, you guessed it, spouses of celebrities; or Confessions of a Kindness Whore, a blog that takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the tough topic of relationship abuse—business is at their cores.

So don’t be afraid to think out of the box or off your rocker. These entrepreneurs are proof of how you can take the most wacky or unconventional idea and make an honest living running a for-real business.