If you want to make alot of money, does it make more sense to sell a product or a means of production?

Question

Assuming that your only goal is to make as much money as possible, which would make more sense? Selling something that can't be produced by your customers and requires them to continue buying from you indefinately, or selling a means by which they will be able to create their own product and will no longer need you to provide for them. This is kind of like the economic version of the teach a man to fish story.

Now, if you were going to start a money making scam, which buisness model would you choose to use?

Answer 1

product.

Answer 2

that depends.

and the answer has seriously changed these days, because of the internet.

suppose you have a good cookie recipe.

you could sell that recipe for $200.

however, the person who bought it could post it on the internet, and no-one else would have to pay you the $200.

alternatively, if you have a product that is difficult to make, why would someone buy the idea.  if you're gonna get rich, you'll have to do the manufacturing.

there may be other answers as well.

considering the cost of cigarettes today, when will it become advantageous for people to grow their own tobacco, and roll their own cigarettes?

the real problem is that, rolling a good cigarette is quite an art.

if you could produce a machine that would do that, at a reasonable price, i rather suspect that you could become fairly wealthy.

and business would only get better over time.

Answer 3

If I wanted to make money, I would have a product that was more expensive than competing products and then lobby the gvmt to pass laws making the competitors product illegal.  This way I could sell my inferior product, a product few want for maximum profits.

Kind of like CF lights!

Answer 4

Used to be this would be one of two choices for consumers but the way things are today it has become more expensive to teach a man to fish so to speak, just look at the price of most of the healthier products vs. the junk, and now with all these rules and regulations in county and goverment they arent allowing people the freeedoms to do for themselves without a price or rule attached

Answer 5

a product.

for example.  people won't even walk a mile.  they want something to carry them.  and thats why dubai makes las vegas look like a slum.

Answer 6

Making money selling things is called 'capitalism'. You sell what you've got that someone else wants and charge them as much as the market will allow. I don't see how the fish story applies to this. That axiom regards continual hand-outs versus education and self sufficiency. Selling a product as opposed to a process is in no way indicative of a 'scam'. A scam would be selling people something but then not delivering it or selling a defective product or misrepresenting the product. Thus, a scam could easily be either a product or a process.