ADVICE: What Idea Are You Working On?
By Steve Poland • February 28, 2007
Or maybe it’s an actual business now. Brief summary of what it is, what problem it’s solving, who might use/need it, and a URL to more info (if you have one).
Anything you need advice on with it? From me or other readers of this blog? Marketing, development, etc.
Post in the comments.
Comments
57 Responses to “ADVICE: What Idea Are You Working On?”
Got something to say?
I’ll kick off with this question, Steve:
When do you “settle” for the site’s base of operations from a technology perspective? When are there enough (in our case) Wordpress plugins and resulting functionality? When do you simply say, “I can do this minimum set of stuff, leave the rest for some other day?”.
And perhaps more importantly how does one (not me, mind you) stick to that, start working more on content and less on testing the latest found plugin?
Go Boldly!
My site is .... FantasyLife is a unique mixture of social networking and fantasy sports. You create a league with your friends and any time you accomplish objectives in your everyday life, you score FantasyLife points. The goal is compete with your friends, at the same time keeping up with each other’s lives.
At this point the core functionality is done. Of course there are always features that can be added, but my priority at this point is building a user base. So what I’m looking for is advice on marketing/spreading the word on the site.
Any comments would be appreciated.
... is a free service that lets readers of your blog rate your blog posts and displays the last 5 readers to rate your post. The widget also sends that information via the magic of Ajax to blogarate.com for processing. The data collected includes blog post Url, title, author, tags and the rating. We process the data and display it for users to find related blog posts and news items.
Blogarate.com is not just a blog post rating system, it is a distributed news aggregation platform.
By collecting blog post details including rankings at the source ... reflects in greater detail what is making news on the web and what blog readers really see is important. Oh and it’s fun too!
There are currently widgets for Wordpress, Community Server, Blogger and Dasblog with more to come.
Any comments would be appreciated.
I’ve come to the conclusion that people don’t know they need something “solved” until someone solves it. For example, I didn’t think someone needed to solve my search problem when I was using Yahoo pre-Google. Ever since Google, it’s hard for me to even comprehend how horrible Yahoo was. Same with eBay… The idea sounded stupid to so many people because they didn’t realize the “problem”, and thus the solution couldn’t even have been imagined.
All I have to say is that if you have an idea, go for it (within reason). I’m not talking about raising millions and selling your house… If it’s a simple concept, just go for it. You’ll be wrong more often than not, but you never hit a bulls eye if you don’t throw the darts.
I’m busy creating this thing called CityTips (it’s still an idea, but the website’s live in Dutch already: ...).
It’s a Digg inspired web sercice which allows users to share and rate various places in Belgium (hotels, restaurants, bars, …). It features commenting and rating (including other people’s comments), a social network element, RSS feeds, tags, etc. All stuff other restaurant / hotel portals don’t have at the moment, and they of course don’t rely on the user-generated aspect neither.
I’m still playing around with the concept behind it, but it would be the first site like this in Belgium, it’s extremely SEO friendly, and there’s definately a need for something like this here in this country.
However: what if the better known portals copy the ideas and apply them on their websites, and what if the information just becomes too much because it doesn’t specifically handle one niche category. And how do you market this without a big budget, in a small country with a low number of high bandwidth internet users?
Hey Robert,
), but good advice nonetheless. Thanks!
I think what your saying might also apply to my comment above as well. If the basic functionality is there, then move forward, spend time and energy in other activities that are going to help move your idea/company forward. I think this is classic “easier said than done” for some personality types (me
The ... idea seems cool. Looks like you might have one of the same issues I’m looking at… how to start the ‘word of mouth’
My current project is ...
This is a site that lets rec league softball / baseball teams create a free homepage, schedule, team news, roster and track player statistics. I also created a free web forum for the site. There are a few similar sites in existance, but most are fee based.
I am going to try to make some money via AdSense / Other programs, but in the end if I had 1,000 teams sign up and use the site and didn’t make any money, I would consider it a huge success.
I made the site live now, with hopes that Google will pick it up before the start of the softball season (April 1). I belive this is a niche market that could take on a life of its own, as ther are many people who are very passionate about softball / baseball. I need to also take into account that most people probably don’t realize that they want a website for their softball team.
QUESTION: Other than Google, what are some good ways to promote your site and get a ‘word of mouth’ program going?
An idea I’m mulling over right now but needs alot of problems solving before it could be viable is the notion of shared investment.
Alot of people have startup ideas but often don’t have the know-how or funds to launch it. My idea is that there would be a website where you could share your idea with others and ask for investment, say 1000 people invest $10, its not alot to lose individually but that would be a great investment to start a project with, each person would then own a tiny stake in the company.
Additionally, you would then have an immediate audience of 1000 passionate people to help showcase your idea to others. Theres also the potential for people to invest in time rather than money, so as a web developer I could say to a person with an idea ‘I believe in this idea and will build the website in exchange for 20% of the overall company’.
The problems I’m having though are trust, one solution would be to require people to break their project up into chunks with an amount of money for each chunk, that way the investment wouldn’t happen all at once but gradually over time and only when the preceding goals are met. It also means investors could checkin and act as beta testers.
Another problem is funding the website to manage all of this, perhaps any project takling part automatically forgoes a % to the parent website. Also, theres issues of payment processing, if somebody is investing $10 a fair chunk of that would be lost in processing fees so do you ask people to invest $10 plus the processing fees?
This is quickly diverging from brief so I’ll stop before I write an essay
Myself and 3 other partners are in the process of getting our business off the ground - ...
This is a website that will bring new home builders together within Australia and allow potential customers to view what plans are available, and compare floor plans, builders inclusions etc. Only an intro site is there at the moment (unless you are part of our private beta). The business model is that the Builders pay a subscription fee to be on the site.
We’ve been working on the proper site for over 12 months now, and one of the challenges we have come up against, is that for a site like this to be effective to the consumer, we need to have lots of builders signed up already. Not much point having this search-style site where there is no content at all… We have spent the last month or so getting builders on board, and we will officially launch to the public around May or so. We are aiming to have about 10-15 builders in one Australian state at the time of launch, so we can get some business going before launching into the other states.
Q: Has anyone got some good advice on how to get paying customers for a site that isn’t live yet? I’d be also interested in hearing what people can suggest for a good public launch strategy.
One of my favorite phrases is that “people don’t know what they don’t know until they KNOW what they don’t know”!
It’s so very true when you think about it, and a good marketer or copywriter can put together text that will make someone believe that they need your widget.
As far as reaching your potential audience, blogging and web forums/message boards in your niche are great places to build relationships and get your link love spread around.
Another tactic is to find a “guru” who is in or has access to your niche and who has a large following already. Offer to cut him/her in on a piece of the action if they help you promote the concept.
I like this site. I always have a million ideas myself, and yes I own many domains! I just sold one in January for $10,000!
Right now I’m developing a 2.0 website that will launch in May or June. It will be at MyFridj.com (nothing there now).
MyFridj is the online equivalent of clipping cartoons from newspapers, but instead of putting them on your refrigerator or cubicle wall, you put them on your blog or social profile page, like MySpace or Facebook. You could say it’s a cross between You Tube, MySpace and Flickr, only for cartoons.
• All cartoons (both static and animated) can be viewed at MyFridj.com for free so long as they are active.
• After they are made inactive (replaced by the contributor), they can still be read for free on individual MyFridj pages.
• To claim a copy for display on your MyFridj, you must buy it or trade for it. Then it becomes you own copy, which you may store or display, starting your own comment thread.
• The price is set by demand. The first many copies are free. Price will go up in one penny increments.
• Contributors can be anyone from around the world and will get 50% of the sales revenue for each cartoon, which will be paid monthly.
• Besides all traditional comics like editorial cartoons, comic strips, gag panels and comic book pages, we will be creating a new category called “News Cartoons.” A news cartoon simply means that the cartoonist is describing in cartoon form an event where he was present.
I’ve been in the cartooning world for a dozen years now and already have syndicated cartoonists as well as Disney animators eager to contribute to MyFridj. So there will be top seasoned professionals there, as well as talented amateurs and those just starting out. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ll have all the usual community tools, plus a couple of unique ones.
I don’t know that I need any advice, but anybody is welcome to give feedback. In another month or two, when enough development is done, I’m going to start showing it to VCs. But I’m not willing to give up more than 30% or so, so if venture capital doesn’t happen, that’s fine, too. Between the advertising and the cartoon sales, I think we’ll do fine without somebody else’s millions. With some of these deals I wonder what the heck do they need all that money for! I personally think that having too much money can be worse than having too little. Two million is the most I would want.
@Dawn — who will be buying these? Is the focus kids on MySpace? What do you think the avg sale price will be? If I understand this — I’m going to pay you, so that I can have a digital copy of a cartoon in a widget that I have on my MySpace page? [But if I wanted to view the cartoon, I could at myfrij.com for free — or on someone else’s widget-ed page that “purchased” the cartoon]?
@1-James — get 80% of the functionality up, worry about the other 20% later. Get people trying out the service/product — ask for their input; engage them; and make tweaks based on feedback.
One of my big mistakes in the past was always working on the “glamor” — secretly thinking in my mind that the brand name, logo, and design of my business cards are *really* important. They aren’t. That’s like putting make-up on a woman — her real beauty will shine with or without make-up. Ditto on your service or product — get it running and get people to try it.
@MattC — I kind of like this, but thinking of a tweaked version sort of… What if you just had the world going at it against each other? Set a specific list of objectives — tons — and people submit photos or videos of themselves doing whatever it is; then they get points. “Eat Chinese Food” — tons of people provide videos (note: have them upload to YouTube, and post the embed code on your site; save you bandwidth costs). “Play Duck-Hunt on an original Nintendo”. Maybe you have 5 new ones release each day — and start with about 100.
You then need widgets — so the MySpace kiddies can spread the awareness [and show off their score; and/or rank — rank in their city and/or state and/or country and/or the entire world!].
Then go crawl MySpace and find the popular kids — the people with 4,000 friends; become their friend, tell them you run this business and …work it so they feel like they’re really going to influence. Tell them they’ll be a beta tester — tell them this is “invite only”. Everyone wants to roll as a VIP. Ask them not to share info on this yet — til you pull the trigger. [Maybe they’ll talk it up — “there’s this cool game that’s going to be launching soon”]. And tell them you’ll contact them first when you launch, so they can announce it and introduce their friends to it.
I like BOWSKILL’s idea about each person contributing the company fund for a startup. I have long been thinking about this since my love for movies. How about contributing funds for movie production?
I even have this idea about setting a film studio based on this called, which I will call the studio PEOPLE’S STUDIO.
@Robin — I don’t know dutch, so I have no clue what your website says
(I do know that I’m visiting Belgium in July for the first time; looking forward to some REAL fries and mayo!)… But I do know that large companies are slow — they spend their time on what works; and to them, what they are doing currently is what works. (Look at Evite - WTF is all I have to say — yes, it works; but there is so much they could do to SOLIDIFY their place in the future).
If your business takes off, then by the time you have 10,000 evangelistic users at your beckon-call — is when the big, slow portal might start to take notice. Even then, it’ll likely take them another 6 months to finally roll-out similar functionality that you have — and by that time, you’ll be at 50,000 passionate users of your service … whom will then see the “big bad portal” trying to copy you! How dare them!, they’ll think — and they’ll become even stronger on your side, and against them.
If you have a superior product/service, it’ll take-off and you’ll have a passionate userbase. Need to start spreading the word of course
The only challenge with Bowskill and rulepark’s “power to the people” concepts have to do with securities laws, the SEC and such. Theoretically, very cool and interesting, just make sure you have someone on the team that is up on filling out all the right forms, publishing the right paperwork, etc. Not to down the concept at all; the government (of the US, at least) does that enough
@Chris / stattrack — You need to find the softball players of the USA [or world]. Don’t rely on Google to pick you up and people to do searches for ’softball’. I’ve been in rec leagues and never done a search for the sport name.
I’d setup a MySpace page for this and/or softball in general. Maybe the profile is called like “I LOVE SOFTBALL”. Then start doing these kind of searches, find MySpace lovers of softball, get them as friends, and eventually send out bulletins — not selling the service, but recommending it. Provide value to those people — mention other softball tips through-out the season; or preseason. Ask for their feedback on your idea — see if they have the same problem you have — do they care to track stats? Will anyone take the time to input the stats?
My little side project is .... It’s a widget site that allows you to create a customized celebrity message that you can post on your MySpace profile. There are two target audiences - MySpacers who love celebs and amateur celebrity voice impersonators (who can use their skills for something other than annoying the heck out of thier friends!).
It uses Amazon web services in the back end which makes it really low maintenance but still requires a little more tweaking before I’m ready to unleash it.
@Grant — I’m rolling out something next week that you’re going to like; I hope everyone does.
Your idea is a difficult one to execute on — I’ve plenty thought it out in the past, as I think hundreds others have. I believe if you raise money from >35 people, you have to file with the SEC. There’s setting up the company. And are you going to go into business with people you don’t even know — and don’t know their skillsets; Joe-Shmoe might be a PHP developer, but how good is it? Aren’t you going to butt-heads with so-and-so? Where does the money get spent with 1000 people that all have same equity positions? When 20 of them feel you could have done it cheaper elsewhere, then what? When you spend your time on a few specific features, when the time should have spent elsewhere in the business — and people are telling you that, then what?
@Leddo — forget the paying customers right now. Get the builders signed-up. Provide value now, get profit later. “But I can’t give it away for free” — if it’s web-based, yes you can. “But that’s my whole business model, is charging” — great, maybe that’ll work, but not quite yet. Right now, you’re going to take it up the arse — and give out some initial free accounts that work 3-6 months. (Trust me, 6 months is so far away — you’ll survive — you lookin’ for the quick buck, or you lookin’ to run a business?).
These builders are going to be nuts to sign-up for your service right now and pay money — unless there are guarantees to them of business they’ll get. They have marketing budgets — they might have $1000 to spend; why would they spend $10 of that to you, when they can spend that elsewhere and get a guaranteed $100 return. “Well, I’m not asking for much — it’s not much risk to them.” Yes it is - who is going to see this website of yours? Are you marketing it? If you’re going to invest money in marketing it to the public — tell that to the builders, then maybe they will.
But I’d get the builders hooked — get them signed-up in the service, get all their plans in the service, ..get them so that their phone is ringing for business as a result of you. If you have 15 of them — and in 6 months you start charging, and during those initial months you brought them business — they are buying your service; and likely for more than you were initially thinking of charging. It has to be worth it to them — get them hooked; they have no reason to start paying you money for nothing (for something that hasn’t even launched).
Feel privileged if they give you their time to actually sign-up for your (free! for now) service and post their plans. You’ll be lucky if they do — and give ‘em 6 months free while you launch, get their feedback, get consumer feedback, and revise your service. Then in 6 months, I truly believe you’ll be charging them more than you’re desperately thinking/trying to charge them now. You might charge $25/mo now — you’ll be able to charge $250/mo in 6-months if you provide value now, and achieve the profit later.
Alot of good points there Steve, I hadn’t even considered the possible disagreements between investors
I know the concept has alot of issues that must be solved but its going to be one of those things that sticks in my brain for ages. Theres a solution there somewhere, I just need to find it!
I’m very intrigued about your rollout next week! Any clues?
[…] Robert Dewey (working on own start-up Wantsy) offered up his advice: All I have to say is that if you have an idea, go for it (within reason) … If it’s a simple concept, just go for it. You’ll be wrong more often than not, but you never hit a bulls-eye if you don’t throw the darts. […]
Thanks Steve for the advice - all good. We are infact not charging Builders yet until we are ready to take the site live. We do present our launch marketing strategy to them when we do the demo of the site, so all in all we are progressing well.
Thanks again.
@Kevin — sounds interesting. Be careful of mis-representation and “likeness” of celebrities. I have no clue about this stuff — but you’ll want to make sure there is something that clearly states that “this is not actually the voice of Britney Spears. We are in no way affiliated. This is a spoof.” Talk to an attorney though first.
You guys are replying to my replies fast on this comment thread — curious, are you using this handy little “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” thing at the bottom? (I’m curious if it works; I just installed it days ago).
I’m currently working to get a big idea off to a small start. I want to build a web service comparable to MS Money, Quicken, etc. The problem is that while such services/application exist, many people find it hard to get into the habit of constantly entering receipts into such systems. The whole point of managing personal finances (budgeting, etc.) loses a point when you’re not accounting for every expense.
Having family support and ideas, we’ve been able to come up with a few creative (we think so at least!) ways to cope with that.
Currently the issue is where to get started. We have coding background, but there are so many details to work out that it’s overwhelming. I’m trying to take 37Signals idea of working from large to small (details), but it’s quite a different mindset for me.
... is the name/site. This is going to be exciting, so hopefully a working demo will be out soon.
Thanks for reading,
Dimitry
Steve - Yep, using the Email thingy…
RSS reader
A couple of things - right now - ... — could use a site redesign, based on Pligg (PIG!) and it’s suppose to be a place to have fun and rate as well as read some of the more absurd and funny things we see onine.
Of course there is my blog - ... — and.. I work as a contractor for a French company called Criteo; Tech Evangelist role.
Oh.. and yeah, I still have a day gig… trying to get rid of that in 2007!
Rex
oops.. lastly my LLC - Nuclear Inbox, LLC - don’t go there as there is nothing there yet — but hopefully soon that is another idea — uhm, did I say I could use a programmer to help out?
@ Steve - Great idea with the MySpace… would you suggest setting up the page as if I am myself, or setup the page like “My Name is StatTrack” - or set it up like I’m a hot 19 year old that plays softball?
OK, I’ll bite.
Mix 1 part social networking, plus 1 part cyber-begging and you get 2 free boobs.
Our site ... is an alternative to cosmetic surgery financing, and offers plastic surgery to those that couldn’t otherwise afford the prohibitive costs.
The interesting thing about this one that all your readers might take away from this post is that this one sort of markets itself. It’s just edgy enough where the media isn’t completely turned off, and yet seem to be somewhat intrigued how something like this could actually work, let alone even exist.
One more point is that the success we’ve seen is really based around the grass root marketing efforts of the sites user base to get the word out. After all, it only serves to help themselves in the end.
All critique and criticisms are welcome!
Reply to Steve: Yes, MySpace kids, etc., but I think bloggers will a very big factor. Blogs are like the new newspapers and what newspaper is complete without a comics section?
You’re other understandings are correct.
People have clipped comics for decades for display. Why? (1) To show off their personality and sense of humor (2) To spark discussion about things they care about.
Our cartoons will be grouped into subjects so that people can easily find gags that are of interest to them. For example, some of our categories are: law, geeks at work, geeks at play, business (4 separate viewpoints, like “owner”), etc. Bloggers can use our gags to introduce or support a subject they wish to talk about.
Of course, many of the cartoons will be political, and next to sex, nothing drives traffic and discussion on the web like politics.
Only 5% of the membership may purchase any one cartoon. Once it’s sold out, people will be directed to the MyFridj pages where it’s on display.
80% of all gags can’t be higher than 25cents. Most won’t get that high. 20% can got to $.50 and .4% can get as high as $.99. As I said, price is set by demand.
Geeks will be our first adopters, as they are a huge fan base for comics. Robert Scoble has already kindly agreed to have a MyFridj page on his blog (the widget will show the latest three gag, but you can click on it to see the owner’s entire collection). I am sending two cartoonists to Gnomedex 7.0 in August, where lots of influential bloggers will be. These cartoonists will report on the events in comic form and participants may grab them for their own MyFridj pages.
So what do you think?
My “big” idea launched a few months and has been slow to get off, but is ticking along. I am now developing version 2, which is a complete rewrite and will include some very new ideas. Tooum Switchboard (...) “is the worlds first fully integrated Blog and Forum solution. It has been born from the idea that a Blog and a Forum are essentially the same thing; the only difference being that they are presented in a different way. So you can now view all comments from your Blog and Forum; you only need login once and visitors can view all activity as it happens.”
It’s basically a blog and forum in one easy to use app. I have used both for years, so it only made sense to bring them together.
Feedback has been positive so far, but would love some critique.
By the way Steve, great blog. Its at the top of the feed reader.
I am working on a multi-function site for law students, essentially combining
- simple networking
- specific lectures/articles/podcasts/audiobooks
- a place to purchase study aides.
Part of this is just for experimentation, since I’m not a much of a coder outside of a little HTML. However, by combining Ning, Wordpress, Payloadz (VERY simply delivery system for downloadable purchases) and Cepstral Text-to-voice software, I feel like I’m on the way to building a very robust niche solution for very little cash. For example, Ning will cost less then $10/month to alias the domain, the Wordpress hosting is $10 a month, and the one-time Cepstral distribution license was $200. Payloadz features Paypal’s micropayment solution, costing me about .15 on each product I sell (avg. sell price is $2) when I sell it. Other then that, there aren’t any costs other then time and energy.
More importantly, I’ve been impressed and excited by how many tools are available for very low cost upon which people can “build something” using simple common sense.
@Grant - I love the “fund my startup” idea and have considered how it could be done myself. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is proper valuation of the company. I can only imagine if someone started the “next big thing” on 10k and suddenly found investors suing the pants off of them. If the founder says, “my idea is worth 500k so the investment capital is worth 2% of the company!” and then 18 months later it sells for 20 million, then while the investors might be happy with their chunk of the $400k (2% of the company worth), they’re will be a few who say, “That company was worth a heck of a lot more then 500k when I invested…”
In other words, it can get kind of messy.
My idea is quite a smaller scale than most ideas on here, but here it is:
I’m about to graduate from Middle Tennessee State University (Largest University in TN @ > 24,000 students) I’m currently working on putting together a site where MTSU students could post things such as textbooks, iPods, etc for sale and other MTSU students could purchase them online.
Not a very novel concept I know, but I think the reason it will really take of is textbooks. It will be a half.com replacement because when you sell your book (or buy a book) you can just take it to the campus post-office and give them the other student’s P.O. Box and pay no shipping.
Quicker service and you know you’re working with someone close. I’ve still not completely decided how the students will pay each other (thinking PayPal) and how to get the funds matched up from one place to another, but I think it’s an idea that can work.
Thinking online ads only, I don’t plan on charging any fees. Like Chris, if I can save a few thousand people $20-30 on their next textbook, as well as make someone an extra $10-20 on the next textbook they sell, I’ll be happy.
Website is ... but it’s not up yet.
As a follow-up to my last comment, I’ve uploaded an early (Alpha) version of Raider Exchange at ...
I’m in the middle of changing over to this layout from my last one so everything doesn’t exactly line up correctly.
I appreciate any thoughts.
Lydon - cool idea. Even though I know it’s early in the design, I don’t see any link to the “Textbooks for sale” page. I suspect that will be prominently displayed shortly.
A few ideas for features that might be beneficial
- Trader’s forum: since you aren’t getting in on a transaction fee, make a place for people to just trade their books to each other. It makes the site more useful to them and doesn’t cost you any revenue. “I have ‘People’s History of the U.S. by H.Zinn. I am seeking any of the 3 t’b’s required in Prof. Smith’s Women’s studies class…”
- RSS feed of newly posted books.
- Ability to set alerts (email, RSS, even SMS) when someone posts a book for sale.
- Tagging of books not only by title and author, but also by class name, department, professor name, etc. So students can search for “Prof. Jones English Class” and see all the books on the syllabus that are for sell right then.
These are all features on the blueprint for one of my projects (to be located at techstbooks.com) that I think would be beneficial to college users buying/selling/swapping books.
@Dawn — I’ll be curious if this takes off. How will you handle the micropayments? PayPal takes like $0.35 right off the bat, plus 2.2% or something. I could see this becoming somewhat of a ‘istockphoto’ of cartoon material for bloggers, newspapers, etc.
I’d also hit up Whitney Matheson at USA Today’s Pop Candy — she’s a comic nut - ...
Best of luck!
Hey Colin, thanks for the feedback. I’ve already put together a little bit of the RSS portion (http://www.raiderexchange.com/rss/newitems.aspx), but I haven’t added it to the page yet.
I like the idea of the trade forum, and I love the alerts idea. I would love to eventually get to the point where a student could type in their class schedule (all classes have 5-digit ID’s) and a page would come up showing what books are currently posted for each class and automatically alert them when new books for their classes are posted.
I have no idea where to start attempting to get any useful data from the University, however. Though I’m certain it’s somewhat available because there is a huge off-campus bookstore whose website includes all of the class/professor/textbook information.
Again, thanks for the ideas and good luck with techstbooks.com
Wow how ironic that I was just posting on my blog about our new startup… great post. Do any of you like to remain stealth as long as possible?
...
Thanks,
Tom
@ Steve and Dawn
Paypal now offers a Micro pay solution that is a lot cheaper. I think it’s 5% + .05 per. See below
_________________________________
On August 31st, 2005, PayPal announced our new Micropayments rate of 5%
+ $0.05 per transaction-a discount for our valued merchants.
The rate is available today to U.S. merchants who sell digital content
to U.S. customers, when PayPal is the sole payment solution offered to
customers for micropayments transactions.
Merchants who wish to use PayPal’s micropayments pricing will need to
open a new PayPal account through the account registration link at the
bottom of this note.
Merchants who receive both “macro” and “micro” payments should maintain
two separate accounts: 1: to apply their standard rate to “macro”
payments and 2: to apply the “micro” payments rate to their
micropayments.
Each PayPal account is associated with only one merchant processing
rate. That rate determines the fee that’s applied to funds received into
that account (additional information on PayPal’s Standard Fees is
available at:
[www.paypal.com] ). For
example: if your Premier/Business Account rate for receiving funds is
2.9% + $0.30, using PayPal’s 5% + $0.05 micropayments rate would reduce
the total transaction fee charged to payments received below the value
of $12 (per payment). However, if you accept payments that are greater
than $12, you would pay a lower processing charge by accepting the
payment into the account set with the 2.9% + $0.30 rate.
If you wish to leverage PayPal’s micropayments pricing, please open a
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Wow - which one do you want to hear about?
First, let me say, this is one of the few blogs in my feedreader that I read each time there is a new post. (That’s a big deal for me!) Keep it up - it’s refreshing.
I have got 2-3 different sites/ideas/companies that are SO good (and have been built of paper for 2+ years, and they are STILL good ideas), but I simply can’t find the talent that I need to make them a reality. Either I know what kind of service/skills I need and I can’t find the right people, OR I have no idea what technology can accomplish what I need, so it’s hard to start looking for people.
At least two of the ideas are REALLY good, but they are no good if I can’t make them happen. Oh yeah, and I have to also run my current Internet business at the same time…
Any thoughts?
Laura
@laura — you ever going to find time to work on the 2-3 other ideas, or are they going to be on paper for another 2 years? You can private email me them if you’d be interested in possibly contributing them as public blog posts (and having them ripped apart and/or added to — hearing insight from others).
Or check this out: ...
@ Steve & Dawn
Google Checkout offers Micro Payments as well w/ No Transaction charge till 08..
I am always worried about letting my ideas out of the bag…do you find that it takes awhile to get over that fear?
I am really glad I found your blog Steve through MyBlogLog.
I actually posted my startup update yesterday..
...
@Steve -
Thanks for the note. You pose a very valid question, and the answer is that they *will* be developed, it’s just a matter of when and by whom.
I will email you privately. I feel really protective of these two projects, but perhaps that’s not the best way to be… (and you can show me otherwise)
Thanks, Steve!
Laura
Here comes a bit late entry
I am working on a e-commerce solution.
It is essentially about turning any website to a shop. The backend is completely separated to a dedicated site where you can process orders, control the stock etc. And on your website, you just add single line of code(or as many as you wish) for “add to basket” and another line for “checkout”. And the checkout button will redirect you to secure page where you can give the information required and choose payment options.
Compared to what PayPal does, this one is more about the shop and the features needed for running it.
Happy to have thoughts on this one!
Steve - I also have another idea, that is in a biz plan form. I’d like to shoot that by you to see what you think. If you are interested in taking a look - would you be able to drop me a line today or when you get a second? I have the biz plan on another computer which I won’t be able to get to until this evening. - Rex
Steve,
Long time fan, short time contributor…
Here is one for you and your fans to chew on…
I have developed a seminar/workshop that goes along with what I discuss in my book, How To Play Business Golf. The problem I solve is to stop the misunderstanding and lack of interest business people have of golf and explain exactly how it can be a very effective business tool if used correctly.
The three things each person who reads the book, hears the speech or attends the seminar/workshop will leave with.
1. A complete awareness and understanding of the importance for the need to develop solid business relationships,
2. Learning why businesses needs to quit using golf as a sales tool and how to use it as a business tool
3. And understand why businesses need to stop treating a large percentage of their customer, employee and vendor base as being disposable.
The product of all of this is long lasting business relationships that will take a business long into the future…
I am currently looking for assistance in someone who is willing to contract the marketing, promotions and puts the butts in the seats for a hefty take of the door of the full day seminar/workshop that includes a half day of lecture on business issues solved by golf and a half day of playing business golf. It is more than a golf outing, it is a business educational opportunity that can be used as a business expense.
The request for service document provides more details and can be provided to serious inquires.
Check out the basics at ...
Antti,
Have you looked at Shopify or zlio?
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail is nice feature!
With Zlio you list products that are being sold by Amazon, Ebay, Buy.com etc. So it is merely about promoting those sites.
Shopify has similarities, but the approach is still different.
My solution is about adding very small bits of Javascript what will generate the “add to basket” and “checkout” buttons to any website.
My project is Duzzio… a vertical search engine for Web 2.0, where you can search by company name and see what has been said about them by different bloggers/information sources. It’s also good for more topical search. I started this a couple months ago as an experiment but since we are finding that people are actually finding it valuable we’ll keep maintaining it and improving. A number of new features are in the works. I would love to get some feedback from Steve and the rest of this group. Thanks for taking the time to review Duzzio.
-d.
What a great blog! I have spent most of my morning reading from the very beginning. I don’t think I have ever done that on any other blog before. Great job Steve and my hats off to the others!
How kewl (and comforting) to know that they’re others out there that are consumed with ideas constantly. I’m constantly thinking of IDEAS that go nowhere, end up a as domain baggage, talk myself out of (which is probably to my benefit!), etc.
My latest idea is Bookdazzle, “Books summed up in 300 words or less.” With the slogan, “If you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough” - Einstein. Users are challenged to sum up what they read in 300 words or less. Readers can vote the best summaries for a book to the top. Out of my own selfish desire to want to read more books, quickly! For example: Getting Things Done by David Allen, in 300 words or less. If, after reading the summary, you have found success in applying the principles summarized by the poster, then maybe you will by the book to hone your skills, etc.
I’m thinking of changing the domain and shrinking the scope to include just business books i.e. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Good to Great, Getting Things Done. Not sure how to know whether a book is busy related, as one could consider The Bible as a work reference. So I have left it open to all books at the moment.
It could also double as a place to store ones notes regarding a book, which was the original idea.
I would LOVE to hear everyones thoughts, feedback (positive and negative) regarding this idea.
Hey Nonlinear. I definitely like your idea, and if you get something more up at your site, it’ll help us with the conceptualizations of what your thinking of doing. Conversely, you could outline here more and let us better understand. Sort of like Steve does with his layouts of ideas.
And if you’re interested in possibly doing some sort of soft launch with your site/services, drop me a line. We have just completely retooled our site and have an entire section dedicated to “reading” and how more and better reading is a large factor in one’s success. Check it out and drop me a line if you are interested in moving forward with your idea.
I’m working on a site that has a lot of reference information. In many cases we’re the only google hit.
Despite Google only having about 10% our site indexed, we’re making a decent amount of income just from adsense. And that’s the problem. We set out to build a very useful, user-focued web 2.0 site, but before we got everything we wanted implemented, we started making money from adsense.
Now I feel torn between scrapping or scaling down the adsense so we can create a more user friendly / web 2.0 experience, and just letting the site live on as a less usefully, but revenue generating property.
I’m also starting to feel like a search engine spammer — tweaking layouts to increase adsense clickthroughs and reading up on SEO. It’s a rather dirty feeling.
Anyone else been in this situation?