A very cute and clever Webkins
A dear friend of mine recently purchased a stuffed animal for his daughter on her birthday. This wasn't just any stuffed animal, it was a WebKinz stuffed animal. Its an adorable plush doll that comes with a unique secret code. What happened next really struck me, and I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. The child hugged the animal, opened the packet with the code and shot up to her room to create an online version of her stuffed animal. Hours later, she was still glued to the site with the new stuffed animal at her feet.

The site offers registered users all sorts of artificial pet functions, where you can build a house for the pet, add it to your other pets, take it out, and even join up with others who give you their pet's name. The site itself wasn't amazing, but the fact that the subscription involves a physical animal was.

Getting parents to purchase a one year subscription (planned obsolence) to a site with no educational value would be a tough sell. Getting parents to buy a cute stuffed animal for ten bucks that included access to that site is pure brilliance. The parent company, Ganz, knows how to create and sell stuffed animals, what they did was make this more than just another stuffed animal. They sold a subscription to a web site.

When you try to figure out how to make money on the web, get creative. Hell, get a Webkinz.