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.
Like usual, we’re going to start off with some Twitter users you should follow. Remember, all anyone had to do was follow me on Twitter and tweet the following:
@joetech I want that free link in your Bookmark Friday post : http://www.joetech.com/suggests/bmftw
This week, three people asked again and nobody new bothered to, so:
Babasfarmlife (Wiley, Colorado)
Bio: Remodel Victorian Country Stone Farmhouse
Site: http://babasfarmlife.blogspot.com/
Rambleredhead (Indiana)
Bio: Great gay podcast – Interviews with the GLBT community
Site: http://www.rambleredhead.com/
Hilary Dickinson (Suffolk, UK)
Bio: Learning about Internet Marketing with particular interest in helping our young people learn about finance, IM & blogging
Site: http://www.hilarydickinson.com/
Thanks to everyone who retweets my requests for Bookmark Fridays and sends me bookmark suggestions, too. Now on with the bookmarks for the week (and there’s a lot this week):
Fast passports – My project manager is flying into Mexico next week and realized the need for very fast passport processing. Check out these guys!
Twittad – Here’s a “make money on Twitter” idea I like. Would you let someone put a sponsored background on your Twitter profile for a few bucks a week? (affiliate link – If you don’t want me to earn, go right to http://www.twittad.com)
Wall-E case mod – This is one of the better super-customized computer cases out there.
Cyberoptix Tie Lab – A friend of mine makes ties. Scratch that. She makes super hella cool ties that I’m starting to see on TV stars and everywhere else. My favorite is still the medic tie.
Tweenbots – This is a great (and fun) experiment in social interaction and human nature. Just watch.
Glacier W200 wearable computer – How’d you like a computer on your wrist? This is pretty cool, but it’s more for health and military than it is for me and you. Still, pretty cool.
ShirtsMyWay – This is kind of like a CafePress for dress shirts.
Ashton beats CNN – Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to one Million followers. Watch the video as he hit’s 1,000,000. And he’s on with Larry King right now, talking about it.
