A week and a half ago I began work on a website indexing the Markets in Everything posts from my favorite econ blog, Marginal Revolution.
Markets in Everything demonstrate that there are markets for, well, just about everything. :-) Some are pure genius (the "why didn't I think of that" kind), others mistifyingly odd, some sad and others downright sick / disgusting / disturbing.
An unexpected bonus I received from having created the site: Tyler Cowen is sending me a copy of his book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures.
Since I went public with the site a week ago I've had nearly 5,000 unique visitors. Approximately 30% came from Marginal Revolution, 44% from the New York Times Freakonomics blog, and the remaining 26% from various other sources (or users whose browsers aren't configured to send referrers).
A professor from the University of Washington was kind enough to write:
Just wanted to say a BIG THANKS for compiling all of the Marginal Revolution "Markets in Everything" posts! I am using them in an econ class I'm teaching soon, and had made little progress in looking for all of them... now you have done that for me!
A fun little project, and very much worth the $6.99 I spent registering the marketsineverything.com domain name.
—Michael A. Cleverly
Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 22:31