There are some places on the internet which sell very, very cheap goods.
My plan is to have a online store which is, basically, a different front end to a different store run by someone or other company.
In my example I'll use DVDs.
I find the *cheapest* dvd online store on the market
(or that I can find). Now my store every day trawles their site -- and adds all their DVDs, prices, and any pictures they have to my own store (this naturally can not be copyrighted material - its only the names of films!). All nice and automatically. BUT the trawner adds 10% to their price which it's on my site.
Now I know my price isn't the best on the net -- but it's still gonna be really, really cheap. So I will still get customers who haven't heard of my supplier (heck - I still shop at Amazon sometimes).
Whenever someone order a DVD my online store automatically buys it from the first, cheaper store. No human link necessary - imagine the lack of overheads.
As soon as its delivered to me, I repackage it (a 20 second job) and post it out to the customer. Of course there may be DVDs not avaiable etc. so I may need to spend half an hour a day dealing with that .. on occasion refunding customer's money etc.
What a simple business. I don't have any stock to look after .. or virtually any of the hassle of actually day to day running a business (apart from publicity and stuff). Basically I just sit there making money from the customer who doesn't know about the cheapest site on the net. The other business even tell my 'trawler' about new releases -- provides the titles of the new DVDs .. I just sit there and take sales.
This idea can be extended to other products / businesses.
Just to make it clear -- the 'even cheaper company than mine' is not known to the customer .. he's just found 'Brits DVDs' and has thought '$15.68 for a DVD? I'll go for that'.