The $1,000 Challenge

[Toymanator]

When I was in High School my teacher gave us an assignment that went as follows:
She hypothetically gave us $500 and told us we had to invest it in a product to sell at a weekend market. She gave us scenarios stating how many customers we recieved in the three day weekend. We had costs for everything (the rental of the booth, products, taxes, etc etc.) I thought about this the other day and thought I would throw it out their for a challenge on the board. After YOUR experience if you were given $1,000 what would you do with the money to get the most return.

[Doodyps]

I think we are all still trying to figure this out. I have always loved the idea of small transactions that net a big margin. Hypothetically selling something that costs 1 cent for 3 cents or so, and then making tons of transactions. Of course, getting millions of customers and the means to get them the product is never easy. with a $1000 dollars I guess your best bet is to come up with a simple product that with the addition of minimal human labor, gains huge value. something like buying string and beads, then designing and making simple necklaces. A catchy "brand name" and logo with an average appeal and enough customers could surely take $1000 and maybe x5. Or, and this is super random, if you could do oragami, take $1000 worth a paper, at pennies a piece, and sell each figure for $5 (maybe with a little fortune or history of the art), youve just taken a piece of $.04 and turned it into $5 with a little creativity and labor. thats a 12,500% return, if my math is right. hmm, maybe I should learn oragami. Thats $2,480 profit for every $20 you spend (plus labor of course). Thats $124,000 made on $1000. Who wants to make an oragmi machine with me? Or start a sweatshop? Lets do this thing! Corner the Oragami market.

[RLorenzen]

All other things equal, there are a few things I could do.

1)Stocks. I know everyone's going to say that's not enough, but if you actively trade it, it's enough to make a profit and grow your account. Yes, even in this market.

2)Start an eCommerce website selling some kind of product. Have the product drop shipped. Retail sales are pretty ugly right now, so I don't know how smart this would be.

There are many things you can do with $1,000. Just be creative.