Overview

You are lounging around one day minding your own business, when suddenly it hits you like a ton of bricks - of course!!!! Why didn't I think of that ages ago? It's so obvious!!! What a brilliant idea!!! The perfect online business opportunity.

You go searching on the net to see if anybody else has got the same idea. You find that there is a guy, he is in Germany and is doing quite well, nobody in your country though. You start to get that look in your eye and can already feel the money in your hands. The only problem is you have no idea how you would implement the idea, you know nothing about web designing, so you shelve the idea.

Well, you don't have to, chat to us and let's make that great idea of yours happen!

What type of projects are we looking for?

Your idea doesn't always have to be unique, if fact being first to market is often a big disadvantage, we chat about that further down the page.

We are looking for ideas that are :

• Internet based, or use the Internet as it's point of contact
• Easy to explain
• Solve a problem / make the users life easier / entertain
• Is new / near new or has a unique twist that gives an old idea a fresh start
• Has a broad target market or
• is in a niche market and can be sold at a premium
• have a decent earning potential, either in the short term or residually in the longer term.

Examples of these would be :

• New services / products like what YouTube did for video
• Near new services / products like what Skype did for telephone calls
• Old ideas with new twists like offline courses that are taken to the Internet or like what Twitter did to the common blog.

Ideas that we are not looking for :

• Ideas that would take an hour to explain before your Grandma understands
• have nothing new to offer, eg., adding an online store to your website is not a new idea
• Ideas that will only earn a living wage for one person
• Ideas that will take millions of dollars to implement.

What we have to offer

We will do the design work for your project and assist in the planning and implementation of the project, ie., we will do our fair share of the donkey work and add our expertise to the mix.

We will do this either free or at a greatly reduced price, depending on the timeframe required to design and implement your idea, in exchange for a share of the future profits.

If your idea fits the bill, then please contact us asap so we can get the ball rolling...

Contact us today about partnering with us

We prefer if you call us to discuss your idea, our number is +64 9 428 4196. Please ensure you call during office hours, New Zealand time.
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How to test if your idea has the potential to be successful?

There are many people with many ideas and everyday the list of new ideas grows exponentially. The problem is that most ideas never see the light of day because they are simply not do-able. Here is a way for you to check if your idea has potential and as you will see you will have to be brutally honest in your assessment :

1) Is it really a new idea?

The funny thing is that usually your brilliant brainwave has been thought of before, and possibly not even very new. There is even a good chance that your idea has been well implemented already . If that is the case your idea may not be worth implementing as the competition is already intense and your competitive advantage from being first to market is gone. You will also be amazed to find how often your idea has been thought of and implemented only a short time ago. It sometimes feels as though "nature" throws out several ideas one day and a few folks "catch" them at roughly the same time. It can be very frustrating and disappointing to find your idea has been implemented only a month or two ago, but that is the nature of creativity. It does not mean that all is lost and you have to dump the idea.

If somebody has already thought of your idea, then a simple Google search will soon reveal how long the idea has been around and to what extent the idea has been implemented. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, you will often find that the idea may have been done before, but not in your area / country or that the people that have already implemented the idea have done so half-heartedly or are not that far ahead of you to be able to compete. When this is the case, then the idea is still worth exploring further.

2) Does it pass the Grandma test?

If your idea is so complicated that it will take your hours to explain it to somebody, then chances are you have a loser on your hands. People are busy and simply don't have the time to spend hours learning something new. They must see it and immediately know what it is used for or you are going to spend all your time educating as opposed to selling. If you can't explain your product in 20 words or less so that Grandma will understand, then it is time to simplify or re-evaluate your idea. The simplest ideas often make the most money.

3) Is the idea practical?

I got an idea the other day to build a fly through pizza parlour next to the International Space station so the astronauts don't have to fire up the space shuttle every time they feel like take-outs. Is the idea good? Maybe. Is the idea practical? Obviously not, maybe in 100 years time?

Let's face it, some ideas are just plain stupid, others are ahead of their time, other will cost too much, others won't make enough money. You need to stand back from your idea and look at it objectively and decide whether it's practical. Doing this however is not always as easy as it sounds as we tend to get stars in our eyes when we get those Eureka moments.

You may also need to be flexible as an idea will sometimes need to be significantly changed, modified and adapted before it becomes practical. It doesn't matter, it is still YOUR idea that made it all possible and that is a great feeling.

4) Does the idea have a market?

This is where most ideas fall flat, especially when you don't see anybody that has the same idea as you. Chances are somebody HAS had the idea, but it didn't work because nobody else thought it was a good idea.

Ideally your idea will appeal to a broad spectrum of people - that is where fortunes are made, but these ideas are hard to come by. A perfect example would be YouTube - it appeals to most people, from Granny to young kids.

Usually though your idea would appeal to only a niche market, eg. young mothers or businesses that sell cars. If this is the case you need to look at how many potential customers there are. It is pointless spending $100 000 to bring a product to market that only has a potential market of 100 lower income people.

5) Will your target market buy your product?

Let's say you come up with an idea for a new computer game aimed at school children. You better go chat to a few of those kids about your idea first because they may love to play games, but will they want to play YOUR game? Do THEY think you game is good enough to spend their precious pocket money on?

6) Who pays for the product?

Continuing from the game example : the kids may love your game idea, but may not be the ones that will ultimately pay for the product - their parents will, and if they think your game is too violent, etc. for their kids, your idea is dead in the water.

7) Will it make money?

New ideas generally have a research and development cost attached to bring it to market. You will need to ensure that your product will be able to recoup that investment in a reasonably short period of time so that you can actually make some money out of the idea. If you spend $100 000 to bring your idea to market and it sells for $10. You will need to sell at least 10 000 just to break even.

Does the product have a good profit margin? If your product costs $10 to make and you earn $1 on each sale, you better ensure it's the next best thing since sliced bread or you aren't going to make any money from it. In an ideal world your profit margin will be at least 100%.

8) How will it make you money?

Are you going to earn a pile of money in the first few months post-launch and then that's it, or will you sell a lot of products over an extended period of time? Sometimes the ROI (return on investment) is simply not worth it. You don't want to invest a pile of cash and time now if you are only going to break even in 5 years time. By then your product may even be redundant.

If the product is something you need to hit the market with quickly, eg. a Tamagotchi, then you will need to ensure you have the resources to make it work immediately.

If the product will make money over a period of time, eg., a few years, then it is best if it is a product that will earn a residual income, ie., something you have to sell the customer only once and then they will automatically come back for more. It would then also need to be a product that is consumable, ie., it gets used up and needs to be replaced every so often. Finding new customers for every sale is an expensive task that will endlessly eat away at your profits.

9) Can you afford the idea?

If you don't have the cash, the idea would have to be VERY good before somebody will give you a cent because new ideas are the riskiest investments.

10) Do you have the time available to implement the idea properly?

If you are already working 12 hour days now, where are you going to get the time to implement your idea?

Too often we see folks trying to implement ideas in this situation - they try fit it in after hours or in a few spare hours over the weekends. Initially, when you are building a prototype to see if your idea will work for example, this situation may be fine, but as soon as you have decided to run with the idea you are going to have to give the project the attention it deserves. Half hearted attempts seldom work. Usually getting a new idea to market is a full time job that will require 14 to 16 hour work days.

11) Are you really committed to the idea?

Are you willing to work 14 to 16 hours a day, at least initially to get your idea off the ground and into the green. If you are not prepared to miss your Wednesday golf in order to visit a supplier, or work late into the night to meet your deadline, then forget it, you don't have what it takes.

Your spouse and family will also need to believe in your idea because they are the ones that will be sitting alone at home while you are out working those 16 hour days.

12) What is the life span of the idea?

A product that will be a fad and then disappear into oblivion will have to earn you a heap of money or it is not worth implementing, unless the resources required to implement the idea is next to nothing. In that case you have nothing to lose. An example of this would be the Rubics Cube - it was fun and challenging when it launched and made the inventor stinking rich, but it soon lost it's appeal to the mass market.

If the product will maintain it's appeal over a long period of time, 12 months or more, then expect and plan for stiff competition.

13) How easy is the idea to replicate?

If it is going to take somebody an afternoon to copy your idea or if it's something that can easily be manufactured at home, chances are you are not going to earn a fortune with it. You may earn a decent living from it, but that is all. The reason is two fold : 1) every second Tom, Dick and Harry is going to steal your idea in an instant and become your competition. 2) the perceived value of the product will be so low that you won't be able to charge much for the product. Low profit margins = living wage only.

If the idea is not so easy to replicate, then at least you know you will have a head start, and in today's market a head start can mean the difference between make or break because you can be certain that others will see your success and also want a piece of your pie.

14) Are you willing to do the donkey work?

Designing the final product is the fun part of implementing an idea, but after that there is plenty of donkey work to do in order to successfully launch the product. You would have to negotiate with suppliers, get the admin side of the business sorted, market the product tirelessly, deal with customers, etc. Folks often forget about or don't want to do this side of the project, but it is this side of the project that decides if the project will fail or succeed. Remember that it may have started out as an idea, but that idea has now become a business and you are the business owner.

15) Are you willing to take the risk?

All the factors above put together can become quite a big risk in terms of time wasted and money spent if the idea doesn't pan out as planned. Would you be able to walk away a little poorer, but a lot wiser if it does go pear shaped, or will it mean you lose everything in the process? If your answer is the latter, then you are a very brave person indeed and the potential rewards if the project succeeds better be wealth far beyond your imagination.

If you are not willing to take any risks, then it is best to pass the idea on to somebody more adventurous than yourself.

Patents

The first thing everybody does when they get a great new idea is want to patent the idea. Well the sad reality is that you can't patent an idea!!!

You can only patent a process of implementing that idea.

That is why you will find many types of wheelbarrows out there. The person that first thought of the wheelbarrow was only able to patent that specific design. Others were still able to use the idea of the wheelbarrow to design their own wheelbarrows.

Unless your method of producing whatever your idea is, is singular and can't possibly be made another way, then it is often not worth the cost to patent. In fact it is often to your detriment to patent your process as you are then making your process public knowledge. This then allows others to see what you have done and how you have done it. They are then able to modify your design and climb into competition with you sooner than if you didn't patent the idea and left the competition to figure it out for themselves.

A personal example of this happened to me years ago. A friend and I got the idea to advertise on toilet rolls. The perfect captive audience, a consumable product, worldwide market, we had never seen it done before, we were gonna be stinking rich (excuse the pun). We immediately headed off to a patent lawyer to patent our idea.

Once there the lawyer explained that although the idea could be new, there was no new process involved. The toilet paper was still being manufactured in the same way, the printing was still being done in the same way, etc. His advice to us was that we could register a "pattern applied to a product of industry (PAPI)", but that would be useless to us as we could not apply for a PAPI for every single advert. Needless to say we were very disappointed.

Being First to Market is Not Always Best

If your idea is so new and unique that it requires you to educate your target market or create a market for it, you need to be prepared to spend a lot of time and money to do so. Time and money that your competitiors will gladly watch you spend while they hone their competing products, waiting for the moment you have created enough buzz for them to pounce on your market. If this is the case in your situation, then you need to ensure that your product is kept top secret before launch and is the best it can be in all respects from day one so that you make it very difficult for your potential competitors to steal your customers.