Now when you ask someone if they want to go for a spin, you can surpass any banal expectations of driving in a boring car. Instead, for $50,000, you can take them to your brand-new 90-feet-tall Pacific Wheel — Santa Monica’s legendary Ferris wheel. Whether you’re a playboy with too much money to spend, or actually looking for a fantastic addition to your amusement park, this wheel’s got class.

The Pacific Wheel started entertaining the masses in 1996 and saw improvements in 1998 that made it the first solar-powered Ferris wheel. I guess you just don’t want to get caught at the top when the clouds come out.

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Alright, finally what seems like a legitimate website for sale. This auction contains a professionally designed and programmed website, search engine optimized pages (all sites, however, require maintenance and ongoing optimization), resources, specific articles and content for the site and an RSS article feed (one of the top online marketing tools today).

The starting bid is only a $1, because as this auctioneer openly and honestly admits, there’s no current traffic to the site — they’ve teed it up for you, now it’s your job to send it home.

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So do I, but not even lotto tickets work that quickly. I’m writing this post to poke a little fun at the home-based businesses that promise a land of opportunity only a bid away. For starters, I mentioned this before, and will say it again, simply learn to laugh at sales copy that is in all caps, don’t waste your time clicking through on these. I guaranteed you’ll have better success going to Vegas and putting your savings on black.

Also, I’m noticing that a good number of these offers use pictures of lovely ladies to advertise the opportunity. Granted, sex sells, and these beautiful girls catch and maintain the attention for a few, but what does a girl sans panties have to do with any business opportunity other than prostitution?

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This auction item seems legit — well written, concise, admits that you’ll need to do actual work to make it successful — but even if $1,000 is pocket change for you, I’d suspect you’d at least want a 100 percent clear description of what the actual business is. This auctioneer simply tells you that you’ll need to promote the site (no s#$t) and that you’ll get 500,000 contacts. 

Now, you may receive contacts for 500,000 media companies, but have these companies agreed to being contacted? Any type of advertising or marketing must be permission-based, otherwise you’ll be shooting in the dark; hit or miss (mostly miss). Plus, the absolute biggest, most important factor in buying an existing website is the established visitor traffic that comes with it. This mentions nothing about site traffic. So, for $1,000, you could buy your own permission-based e-mail campaign list, have a site built and throw a couple bucks towards a PPC campaign.

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Now you can drink your way into riches. Or can you? This auction is actually for a network marketing opportunity. Eww, gross, no way, fugazi — a few of the adjectives that come to mind when we think of network marketing, right? Unfortunately, there are a ton of idiots out there trying to make money off of other idiots, but sometimes…sometimes there’s a legitimate opportunity out there.

I’m not vouching for this particular business at all, but if the product itself can deliver health benefits to people, and you can find some real people who have worked this exact same business and can vouch for it, then get out your jar of elbow grease and get to it.

Click through and decide for yourself if this is the real deal.

Marketing and advertising proves time and time again that sex sells. This auctioneer is going on a 3,600 mile trip, and is auctioning off advertising space on her vehicle. What’s unique about this? She’s also offering advertising space on herself as well. No, the girl does not come with the auction. But she is offering her Boston terrier as part of the advertising space as well. 

I’m not sure exactly how far this girl is willing to go in her public relations efforts, but I’m pretty sure she won’t be down with tats of your company logo. And it could be worth it to see what kind of costume you could get her to wear across the country in the name of your business.   

Click here and get about a mile per dollar in advertising; $3,500 starting bid.

This has got to be one of the best ways to show off your money — the Cash-n-Ator. This $1,300 giant box features a 3-speed blower, which creates an internal tornado of whatever light-weight material you put in it. It also features a customizable banner — tell the world you’re going to own it just like Scarface.

This is actually a pretty cool way to catch the attention of potential customers passing by your store, or even to impress the hell out of a potential hook-up. Who wouldn’t get a little excited down below in the presence of tons of bills flying in their face?

Click through and bid on one of the most blatant displays of wealth.

This is the ultimate excuse to be surrounded by nude women all day — own an escort agency. Next time your wife asks why you smell like another woman’s perfume, tell her to bugger off because it’s your official business! This agency reportedly brings in $600,000 a year. Anything that legitimately returns 10 times your initial investment is worth looking into. The current owner is even willing to train you and hand over all his clients and girls along with his business model.

It’s one thing to own a dive nudey bar, but this is said to be New England’s hottest escort agency. Wrestling with the ethics of it? Make your models promise not to give happy endings — problem solved.

Click through to make women your business.

If you’re affiliated with Hooters that is. Actually, if you’re affiliated with any hooters, then this one million dollar MySpaceHooters domain name may be worth it for you. You may be able to turn a profit if you have an air-tight business model in place that will take your business from zero to 200 m.p.h. in one day. Otherwise, take your cash out of your wallet, light a match, and deface some government property. 

Yes, including keywords in your domain name does positively affect your search engine results. However, for one million, you could purchase enough sponsored results traffic to last your business a lifetime. Hell, you could buy a small marketing firm for that amount!

Click through and request a lower starting bid.

I know you never thought it would be possible, but your wildest dreams are about to come true. For $13,900, a  Lockheed L-1011 cockpit can be yours! No, not the entire aircraft, just the cockpit. Who could possibly need more than that?

Just think about all the wonderful uses: real-life playhouse for your kids, a unique VIP section at your club, leave it in your yard to annoy your neighbor, or pretend your Howard Hughes and invent a new aircraft. The sky is literally the limit…well, actually, there’s absolutely nothing involved with this item that would get it off the ground, so the ground’s the limit for this one.

Click here to be the master of your own cockpit.

Ever wanted to be a movie producer? Buy the rights to “Splat” and you can check one dream off your list! If you take a little bit from every movie that has been popular you’re sure to end up with a success. Take one gay cowboy, one struggling actress, one diamond smuggler, and a whole lot of surrealism and you’ll end up with this movie.

Proudly described as a “very tall Texas tale” that’s as entertaining as it is funny, the motion picture rights to the book entitled “Splat!” could be a great trip to the movies.

Decide if you want to make a bid on this chance to make a mint.

For $1 million you can become the earth’s next ultimate defender. Apparently, this prototype will change our defenses against germs, the flu and the other wee beasties of the world!

According to what the inventor claims, this product will not only serve as a strong defense against these evil transgressors, but will actually be able to eliminate them all together. Unfortunately, due to insufficient funding, this prototype hasn’t been able to be taken beyond its infancy stages. This should serve as a major warning, however, the auctioneer claims that submitting the winning bid amount will secure you a confidential meeting and discussion of the prototype before any money is exchanged. So, considering this gesture of honesty, and the potential to make millions upon millions while actually helping people, well, this may be something you might want to look into.