- eBiz Insider
- Posts
- Mining sci-fi novels for billion dollar business ideas 👽
Mining sci-fi novels for billion dollar business ideas 👽
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
Mining Sci-Fi Novels for Billion Dollar Business Ideas
Coffee Website Replaced Their Full-Time Income
This Weird Niche Plugin Makes $8,400/Month
$1.2 Million Part-Time Affiliate Site
Dropping Her Kindle Led to a $50K/Month Business
The Dancing Sausage Charging $50,000 Per Post
Latest Momentos
Did someone forward this to you? → subscribe here
Mining Sci-Fi Novels for Billion Dollar Business Ideas
I heard about a website called Technovelgy via Steph Smith on a recent episode of the My First Million podcast 🎙️
Tagline of the site…
Explore the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers at Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) - over 3,800 are available.
Steph explains that Packy McCormick then…
… took this very outdated HTML site that's hard to navigate, and he put it into this database... so it basically takes all the ideas – not just the books but the ideas within these sci-fi novels – and says "does it exist today?"
And so you have this Google Sheet with 3,500+ ideas from sci-fi novels going back to 1634 🤯
Some of those ideas have since become reality.
📝 Packy writes…
Jonathan Swift foresaw 3D modeling, search engines, biofuels, and even floating rocks in Gulliver’s Travels, way back in 1726?
… Ephraim Chambers wrote about humanoid robots nearly 300 years ago in 1727’s Cyclopaedia?
… When Jeff Bezos walked through the logic behind selling books online in this legendary 1997 interview, he looked insanely prescient. But H.G. Wells imagined e-commerce 98 years earlier in When the Sleeper Wakes (and remote work, handheld video players, a proto-internet, and more).
In other words, the ideas found in sci-fi novels are often way ahead of their time 😵💫
Browse through the database – aka The Sci-Fi Idea Bank – and you might find an idea from 100 years ago that could be feasible with modern technology.
💰 As Packy puts it…
If history is a guide, there are billion-dollar-startups hiding all over the Sci-Fi Idea Bank.
Coffee Website Replaced Their Full-Time Income
Today's email is brought to you by The Authority Site System (TASS).
I've now done in-depth reviews of 40+ popular affiliate marketing courses, and TASS ranks #1.
That ranking isn't just based on my own extensive experience with the course – the 51 student reviews we've collected have the biggest say in the ranking 🤩
A recent review…
My wife and I worked through the material and found it immensely helpful. Based on the AH training, we began The Coffee Folk, an affiliate marketing website. It started slowly, but reached the point that it was earning around the amount either of us would make with our full-time jobs.
Another…
What ultimately won me over were the numerous positive reviews of the course and the fact that they don’t make false promises of quick wealth. Instead, they provide a blueprint to steadily build a successful, profit-making affiliate website in a couple of years.
Through January 8th you can get access to the updated 2024 version of the training for the lowest possible price 🥳
This Weird Niche Plugin Makes $8,400/Month
Leandro Zubrezki is the founder of Notion2Sheets.
It’s a "Google Workspace Add-On" that lets you sync your Notion databases with Google Sheets, so you can use the power of both platforms 💪
I didn't think there'd be much demand for such a niche product, but according to a recent interview Notion2Sheets is earning $8,400/month 🤑
In the interview, Leandro shares…
I was a freelance software developer for 8 years, but I decided it was time to pursue my long-overdue wish of building my own products.
💡 How he got the idea…
In May 2021, Notion released the beta of their public API… I knew Notion before but never invested too much in the product…
I deep dived into the product itself, and communities like Reddit and Facebook groups to better understand users and realized that syncing databases with Sheets would enable some workflows that were currently not possible otherwise.
📣 How he spread the word…
The marketing strategy revolved heavily around social media engagement.
Participated in relevant discussions by replying to questions and mentioning my product if relevant.
Sharing brief videos and screenshots showcasing the capabilities of the tool further boosted visibility.
💰 Monetization…
Initially, the tool was free. However, after introducing paid plans, it took two months to acquire my first 10 paying customers.
Growth has always been organic, I am active on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook Groups and where Notion users hang and try to provide value to them, mentioning Notion2Sheets when appropriate.
We often share stories in this newsletter of people "scratching their own itch."
But Leandro didn't build Notion2Sheets to solve a problem he experienced himself.
Instead, he dove into an online community in search of a common problem that he could help solve 🧐
What communities are you involved with or interested in?
Try out Leandro's approach there, see if there's an opportunity to provide a useful product or service.
🗂 $1.2 Million Part-Time Affiliate Site
From the archive, published November 2022…
The site is GiftLab.co and it basically lists a bunch of gift ideas for different types of people and occasions 🎁
For example, these are the top three pages on the site (source: Ahrefs)…
According to a recent interview with the founder, GiftLab is only 5 years old and has already earned about $1.2 million via affiliate marketing.
Sounds like a fast path to success, but check out the revenue progression…
$0 in Year 1
$9,000 in Year 2
$40,000 in Year 3
And then presumably over $1 million in the last two years alone 🤑
But how many people are willing to put serious time and resources into a project for two years while earning way below minimum wage and no guarantee that they’ll eventually win big?