This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.
I’m sure that by now, most people are familiar with the concept of “checking in” to let your friends know where you are. For those who aren’t, it’s pretty simple. You’re out to lunch at Outback Steakhouse and you whip out your phone and check in using a service like FourSquare to let your friends know you’re there. Maybe one of them will drop in and have a drink with you or just notice that you go there a lot and try the place themselves. Checking in is only becoming more popular every day, but now you can get paid for doing it!
Get Paid To Check In
WeReward.com pays you for check ins and tasks you complete in the real world. It integrates with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, so you can still get your badges and share the way you always have, which is pretty cool because I can now just use this one app for all three. Of course I checked out the video below and then promptly downloaded the app to my iPhone.
It’s one of those things I wish I’d thought of first and had to happen eventually. I’ve been checking in all the time on FourSquare and now I can get points for each check in that convert to cash. You bet I’m in.
Trying It First Hand
I haven’t been out yet, but I wanted to give this thing a shot. After downloading the app, I set up all three network connections to Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare. I always do this first in new apps so I don’t have to go back and do it later in the middle of some activity or while I’m on the road. Before I could do this, the app took a little longer to load than I had expected, but I suspect that’s because it is grabbing all the nearby businesses and the reward details. It also crashed the first time I opened it. I can’t say if that’s the app’s fault as I’m jailbroken, but it’s in open beta, so who knows. Regardless, once the app is loaded it’s fast and it hasn’t crashed again. So far, so good. I should also point out that I’m using a non-default font on my iPhone, so text in apps sometimes gets cut off as seen in my screen caps.
When you first open the application, you get a listing of businesses in the area where you can check in and earn reward points as seen in the image on the left above. For these, it seems I have to take a picture of the establishment if I want my points, but it’s not like that’s hard to do. When I hit “Check In”, it loads up the camera, I snap the photo and submit it for review. Another option lets me find things nearby with a search. To give it a test run, I typed in “pizza” and off it went searching for me. A second later, I had a listing that included a bunch of places near me that were either pizza joints or at least serve or sell pizza. Oddly, the list also included Long John Silvers. I don’t think they sell pizza, but other than that, it was pretty accurate. Before you check in, you can also click a little arrow at the bottom to expand a CityGrid listing for the business which includes a bit of helpful information as well as a review count and overall rating.
The image on the right above shows the Tasks view. This is the sweet spot where you can cure a little boredom and earn a lot of points quickly. Points convert at one cent each, so the Taco Bell task will earn you a cool $5 while other tasks are generally pretty simple and get you decent point amounts as well. As a test (and to earn an easy breezy 50 points), I tapped on the WeReward task which asked me to write “www.wereward.com” on my body with a marker and submit a photo of it. I wrote on my hand, snapped a photo, added a little note for Twitter (optional) and submitted it. I now have my first 50 points pending.
You can check the status and history of all your rewards in the rewards page of the app. This shows Pending, Approved, Declined, and Referrals. This page is also where you can see your point total and its dollar equivalent and cash out if you’re over 5,000 points.
Earn With Referrals
If I’m already going to use a service and tell my friends about it, I look for the referral program if it exists, and it wasn’t hard to find here. Not only does it exist, but it’s on a percentage scale. When I refer someone, I get 10% of all their verified check in points, which can add up pretty quick. I know some serious FourSquarers who check in all the time.
Conclusions
Now this is where you iPhone owners should Download the App. WeReward is a welcomed addition to my iPhone. Not only will I use it daily, but it works well and is very well thought out. I’m already excited to try it out for the first time checking in somewhere for dinner! Download and let me know what you think.
With my own iPad on its way to me soon, I’ve been looking at accessories I can pair it with for the perfect experience. The video capabilities present me with a need for a good stand to put the iPad on while watching a TV show or movie, but most of the stands on the Internet are pretty lifeless and they’re all pretty similar in features. Then a stand found me.
UPDATE: This stand now has a web site and will be taking pre-orders in the near future : Perfect iPad Stand
Yeah… The bottom part is a bowl meant to eat food from. I’ve posted a couple times about Quirky, a site that takes product ideas through a community-driven process that refines the idea into a product, logo and all. This is where a site member, Jeff Tromp entered his idea for the perfect iPad stand. Just watch the video to see how it works.
A Better iPad Stand
What will make this iPad stand better than everything currently on the market? The thing that stands out the most to me is the full range of motion it provides. Jeff makes some great points in his video, showing how Apple’s stand sticks you with portrait positioning and walks away. His racing game demonstration in the video above (and additional racing-specific demo) show his iPad stand going beyond portrait or landscape, turning the iPad, itself, into the steering wheel for the game. From what I’ve seen, it really seems to provide the freedom that all the existing stands are lacking.
The amazing part about this new (hopefully) soon-to-be-product is that people are already reviewing it and consumers are lining up to buy one. Across the globe, a site in Korea posted a favorable opinion (translated) and views on his YouTube demo just keep going up. A lot of his video traffic is viral and that says a lot.
Make it happen (and make some money)
The two best things about Quirky are that you can help guide the development of a product and that you can make money doing it. This is no exception. Jeff’s Perfect iPad Stand is in the running to be chosen as Quirky’s Product 46 and I think it will win, too. Just click that link and create a free account at Quirky to vote for Jeff’s idea. If it wins, your vote will earn you a little piece of every single sale. Seriously. Not only can you say you helped it become a product, but when it’s ready for sale, you can wake up in the morning and see earnings from its sales. I know this because I’m currently earning on 21 products at Quirky and the highest earner for me is their Cloak iPad case.
People make money online all the time, and some people make a lot more than we’re talking about here. The difference is that it usually happens as a result of putting out a lot of money in a risky venture or having some specialized knowledge or even just getting incredibly lucky. This story is about a guy who had a good idea and brought it to the place that could turn it into a product with very little investment. The guy is Jim Robinson and the site he took his idea to is Quirky.com.
What is Quirky?
In short, Quirky (which I mentioned last year) is a site that brings together thinkers to take a good idea from just that to a product on the shelf. People like Jim spend $99 to submit an idea for consideration. Phase one starts with people voting on ideas, which helps the company select a winner. Subsequent phases such as naming, industrial design and logo design and selection all earn people “influence” for helping guide the product’s creation. In the end, those who helped all have influence (which translates to a percentage of sales) in the final product, the original idea submitter earning the highest. Involvement can be as little as filling out a survey or voting in the winning logo or it can be more involved like creating the winning logo. The more you contribute, the more you earn on every sale of the final product. When a product is designed and ready to go, it experiences a presale period with a threshold of sales to meet before actually hitting the production line. This final hurdle completed, a product sells on the Quirky site as well as through any vendors that pick it up.
How Jim Made All That Money
My first instinct is to say that he didn’t have to do a lot of work for the money, but truth be told, Jim already had some man hours into this before becoming a part of the Quirky community. He had owned several pocket knives over the years, but he never felt any of them really got it right. He wanted to build the perfect pocket knife. Realizing that “perfect” meant different things to different people, the idea of a modular pocket knife was born.
After a few prototypes, Jim’s idea materialized as a product idea submission for Quirky. With $99 on the line, the idea had little more than a decent description and high hopes. After voting and discussion, the then unnamed product was chosen for production and began to work its way through the development phases, getting a name, logo, design, and even a tag line from other Quirky community members (or “quirks”) along the way. Last week, Quirky announced Switch, the modular pocket knife kit.
In pre-sale, Switch had a decent start and was moving along at an average pace. After seeing some great press from top tech blogs, it caught the eye of major online retailer, Think Geek, who committed to a large purchase and helped the sales total for the day reach 1,170 units. At $8.90 per unit sold, Jim earned over $10,000 in just one day for his cut. That doesn’t count the almost 300 units sold in previous days and the countless sales to come.
What about the other contributors? They’re not doing too bad either. The second highest contributor, Kelly Saglibene, has earned $1,311 in the 5 days Switch has been up for sale for the logo she created and Julie Kowal is taking home over $1,000 so far just for submitting the winning name. Sadly, I was busy during the Switch product development process and did not contribute.
My Q & A With Jim
I had some questions I just had to ask Jim. I’m sure he’s busy, so I kept it brief.
How did you first come across Quirky?
Through a prior investor that knew them.
Why and when did you decide to submit your idea for production on Quirky?
When I first met Ben we talked about various products. I had been tinkering with pocket knives for years trying to modify them. He thought it was a natural idea for Quirky. As a test of their site, I submitted it.
How did you feel when your idea won the selection phase?
I was a bit surprised – it had not won the first time through. I thought perhaps it was too complicated a product for Quirky. Evidently not!
How about when you saw all those sales?
Beats a stick in the eye!
Do you have any plans for all the money Switch is making you?
My guess? Charity. But who knows, maybe a boat J
Will you be submitting more ideas to Quirky after such a success?
Definitely. I have always been a tinkerer and have several ideas. Just hard to find the time; you can’t just submit on a whim. The community expects (and rightly so) a well-thought out concept, complete with pictures, or video, or schematics and whatnot.
Jim ended with a very good point. If you’re going to pitch a product idea or business model to anyone, it needs to be a well thought out idea and it’s the same for Quirky. Don’t let that scare you though. If you have a great idea, figure out the details, draw up some artwork (or get help) and submit it to Quirky. You may just have the next hot product.
“Every few days, we bring one product from sketch to store”
That’s the promise of a pretty cool crowd sourcing site, called Quirky.
What is it and how does it work?
Quirky is a site that lets people submit ideas for new products to be developed. Presenting an idea costs about $100, so make sure you really think it’s a good idea and take some time to think out the details before submitting. This is essentially your business proposal for venture capital. Of the ideas submitted, the rest of us get to vote for our favorites and contribute to the product idea. Days later, a product is selected and the process begins to develop the product idea into a product.
Product development consists of a few more steps and like the product selection process, site members get to influence the process by suggesting a product name, designing a logo, etc. It all happens pretty quickly, but email reminders help you keep on top of new product stages. Once a product has completed all of its development stages, Quirky begins taking pre-orders. Depending on the product, they’ll accept pre-orders for, on average, from 300-500 units. Once they fill the pre-order, the product goes into full production.
How to make money The best part about this site is the ability to earn some extra money. The idea originator gets a decent perentage of the sales, of course, but then many of the contributors do, too. It may be a good amount or just pennies per sale, but it’s on every sale. I like to think of it in terms of something like the Slinky or the Rubik’s Cube. Had one of those products started on Quirky, several contributors would be laughing all the way to the bank. The example on the right shows actual earnings for some people on a $15 product. Helping out with a product’s development might not make you filthy rich, but it could bring in some nice Christmas money.
A good example
A pretty good example of this was the first product I helped with, Scratch-n-Scroll, which is currently selling nicely.
Scratch-n-Scroll is a standard mousepad with an added writing surface. This mousepad is for all those times you are working at your desk and cant find a pen to jot down that phone number or list item you know you will forget later on.
Simply, write notes to yourself on your mouse pad using just the pressure from your finger or the built in plastic stylus as a “pen.” Cool thing is, just like your childhood toy the magic slate, you can erase the notes at any time simply by flipping up the semi-transparent top sheet.
When I got to it, it was a really good idea among a list of ideas we had to vote on. It was my first pick of those offered, so I was glad to see it chosen for development. Through all the stages, I think the only thing I did was offer some comments about the design and function. My help was noted and I now get a very small amount of money (I think it’s like 1.5 cents) from every sale. If they sell 10,000 of these things, I’ll make about $150, which is pretty good for having just commented on how to improve the design.
Make the most of it
As someone without a ton of free time, I always look at how to get the most benefit from the time I spend on anything new like this. With Quriky, there’s three ways to earn money. The first two we’ve already gone over: submit your idea or help with someone’s idea. The third is to help sell the finished product. When I linked to the above Scratch-n-Scroll, I did so with a unique affiliate link. On this product, I get a 10% commission on any referred sale, and sold one already by just dropping a link on Twitter. If you choose to help with product development, don’t just help with one product. Help with any product that you like enough. If you help with 10 products that are all in production and selling, you can build up a nice residual income. Finally, when I signed up (and I think they’re still doing it), I got $20 in my account just for signing up to help contribute, so at the very least, go sign up.
If you do sign up, leave a comment here and let me know what you think of the site and what products you assisted in.
PayPerPost is dropping a little cash on me for a paid review and they expressed that they want it to be honest, which is good because I’ve got some good things and some bad things to say about their new v4.0 Alpha launch.
A year or two ago, I didn’t like payperpost , but it wasn’t their fault. What I didn’t like was the back-handing that Google was doing to all the bloggers to tried to make a couple bucks for their opinions. Google dropped me from PR5 to PR0 overnight and with the frustration of trying to get my page rank back up came fear that it could vanish just as easily. Because of that, I stayed away from PPP and a couple other sites for a long time. To be fair, I shouldn’t even say I didn’t like PayPerPost, because that’s not really accurate. Regardless, I found myself sans that revenue stream until recently.
I got an Alpha key a few weeks ago so I could check out the new site before it officially launched and it was a nice change from the old PayPerPost I remembered. The first thing I noticed was the new elegant design. It’s simplified and they’ve cut it down to only the necessary goods.
It’s not as great as SocialSpark (another IZEA site), but It looks like it’ll be much better when they come out of alpha and have more opportunities available. It’s hard to tell where it can go from here and how some of the searching and sorting features will work out until there’s more available, but it’s off to a pretty good start. The only thing that really bothers me is the very limited time frame we get to complete an opportunity. Id love to see them open that up to at least a few days. In any case, after a long time away, I’ll likely be logging into PayPerPost every day to check opportunities like I do currently with SocialSpark. Welcome back, old friend.
