A friend of mine mentioned that while he and his wife was on vacation they saw an Internet kiosk in a Caribbean airport. He thought it may be a good concept for me to look into. I decided to look into the Internet kiosk business. I searched the Internet and found a company who builds kiosks. I bought three kiosks for $10,000. I placed one machine in a local motel. It was doing well in the sales department, the problem was that it would freeze on a constant basis. As a result, this was the early curse of the Internet kiosk business. The idea was great, however, Windows 98 simply did not do the trick (see software). Two, three times per day the computer would freeze. There was nothing you can do about it. If you had a profitable location, you needed someone close by who could reboot the machines when customers complained.

Despite the software issues, I was determined to make the kiosks work. One day I surfing EBay and found a person who was selling 30 internet kiosks. I contacted him, flew down to Portland. Basically, we made a deal that I would take the 30 kiosks for $10,000. I now regretted purchasing the prior three, but another was I justified it was thinking I bout 33 kiosks for $20,000. These 30 kiosks originally sold for $5,000 each. However, the person was holding them for a company that went bankrupt, so he just needed to dump them. They were sitting in his garage for 2 years. I placed about 20 of the 30 kiosks. I then came to a realization.

I realized internet kiosks were not as efficient as a simple desk and chair. People were intimidated by kiosks. They looked funny and it was hard type on the small keyboard and use the mini mouse. When you placed a simple keyboard, mouse and desk, sales jumped by 300%. I quickly replaced all my kiosks with traditional office looking set-ups. Sales improved greatly. I placed the kiosks back on eBay. I luckily was able to sell them for exactly $10,000 two years later. At the end, they didn’t cost me one cent.



Here is the basic conclusion for the Internet kiosk: Internet kiosks are not the most efficient machines sales wise. However, they have one important function. They look good when your presenting them. When you go to a hotel president to sale your idea, you need to look slick. Kiosks look slick. A regular desk with a PC and keyboard doesn’t look as good. The Internet kiosks were my gateway into many locations. Once I had the relationship, I was able to switch the kiosks with desktops. The second thing kiosks are good for are for location that don’t want the desktop.

By 2003-2004, I gave up on the kiosk. That was a mistake, because some locations only wanted Internet kiosks. The best game plan is to have both. Be a jack of all machines.