Created a site in the early aughts and tried to charge $1 a piece for people to make their own avatars. Nobody paid. Had to make it free about a month later. Now Flash is dead, so site no good.
http://www.dudefactory.com/
Spent about a year building the absolute best text-message short-code system that let you run groups, competitions, surveys, take payments. Kept adding features and yak-shaving and forgot to actually sign up any customers. First month the product was finally "finished" we ran out of money for our connection to the SMS network and that was the end of it.
One more.. does this count as a failure?
Made a torrent site for TV shows. Took $13m in revenue. Law enforcement said "naughty, naughty". Closed site. No more revenue.
On a private torrent tracker you have to keep "ratio", which means you have to upload as much data as you download. This is impossible for most people so trackers often allow you to donate to the running costs of the site in exchange for bypassing the economy and having your upload increased based on the amount of your donation.
Of course, the donations vastly outweighed the actual hosting costs and the excess goes into the pockets of the site owners.
Spent about a year building the absolute best text-message short-code system that let you run groups, competitions, surveys, take payments. Kept adding features and yak-shaving and forgot to actually sign up any customers. First month the product was finally "finished" we ran out of money for our connection to the SMS network and that was the end of it.
One more.. does this count as a failure?
Made a torrent site for TV shows. Took $13m in revenue. Law enforcement said "naughty, naughty". Closed site. No more revenue.