When reality TV ‘star’ Josie Cunningham  said she was going to sell the placenta from her then unborn child there was a public and media outcry. But she wasn’t doing anything  that hasn’t been done before. Why would anyone want a fresh placenta? To eat it of course!

Brooklyn Placenta Services is run by a lady called Jennifer Mayer who has made a business out of turning placenta into easily consumed health supplements. The logic is easy to follow – animals eat their placenta, so there must be a reason. Perhaps it’s health. The placenta feeds the baby until birth, filtering toxins while letting in vitamins, minerals, and oxygen from the mother’s bloodstream.

Surely it’s too good to throw away. So why nor sell it instead? Heck, why not start a new business with your own placenta, or other peoples?

I can think of several reasons, but it seems like there’s a market.

If anyone accused you of selling s**t you’d probably be offended, but in this case there’s really no need to be.

A non profit organisation called ‘OpenBiome’ wants your faeces is prepared to pay up to $13,000 a year for it, and you get to feel all virtuous at the same time. Too good to be true? Well maybe, because they don’t just want any old faeces!

The organisation is involved in helping people suffering from a bacterial gut infection called ‘C.difficile’, which can be alleviated by introducing healthy faecal matter from a donor into the gut via endoscopy, nasal tubes or in tablet form. This faecal matter needs to be super-healthy and so if you’re to profit from this you’ll need to pass a whole raft of medical tests first. Only 4% of applicants make the grade.

Once your poop is accepted $40 is the going rate for a deposit, with a $50 bonus if you make five deposits a week. That works out to the $13,000 a year potential earning.

Now that’s definitely not to be sniffed at.

A lot of people think that in order to have a successful blog, you need to be an expert in some field or other, but that isn’t always the case. In fact sometimes it’s probably better if you know little or nothing.

People aren’t just interested in reading blogs containing information and advice from those ‘in the know’. They also like a story, and some of the best stories of all involve personal journeys. So for example, you might not be an expert on weight loss but you might need to lose weight. You might not know anything about renovating a property, but you may have a property to renovate. A blog which follows your progress as you work towards your goal can be far more interesting and entertaining than a lecture from someone who knows it all already.

So if you’re interested in creating your own blog, but don’t know what to write about, think about what you’re currently trying to achieve, If you’re trying to do it, others will be trying to do it too and would welcome the opportunity to join you on the journey.

When I was growing up, I remember my mum using the phrase “I think he must have a tape worm.” to describe people who seemed to eat large amounts of food without putting on weight. Little did I think that several decades later, people would be voluntarily hosting tape worms in an attempt to lose weight. The idea is that you buy Taenia saginata tape worm eggs for around £55 each which then hatch in your gut and feed on the food you eat before it’s digested and stored as fat. When you’ve lost enough weight, you buy a Praziquantel tablet (no, I don’t know what it is either) to get rid of the worm.

The whole thing sounds horrific but it shows the lengths some  people are prepared to go to, in the quest to lose weight. If you’re looking for a ‘hungry market’ (literally!) you need look no further than this one.

It only seems like the past 15 years or so, that people started talking about gluten intolerance and gluten free diets. Well what’s good for humans could be good for dogs. I just read about a lady called Tena Norman (in the United States of course) who has set up a company selling gluten free treats for dogs.

I don’t know anything about dog physiology, but I do know a bit about human psychology. If their pet appears under the weather they will happily spend money looking for a solution. And if gluten free diets work for some humans, maybe they’ll work for dogs too. If you’re looking to break into the pet food/treat market, this could be a profitable angle.