How to sell an idea on the Internet? Idea exchanges. What are they?

Nowadays, it’s out of fashion to search for the Philosopher's Stone for turning various metals into gold. Moreover, there’s no necessity to do that. Today, you don’t have to conduct dangerous experiments. If you want gold to fly into your purse, all you need to do is turn on your computer filled with hardware, enter some kind of a magic spell containing of login and password and…dive into the world of binary codes where you can make money out of practically anything…even out of thin air.

First things first. To begin with, it’s worth saying that the Internet is a place where it doesn’t really matter whether you have a degree or not, or what your parents do for a living and what curves you have. The Internet loves hard-working, persistent, punctual and, above all, eccentric and sharp-witted workers. For those who can write articles, create websites and do creative work, the Internet has become if not a gold mine then a primary source for income. Great ideas and unusual approach are much appreciated here. And it’s the Internet where offline agencies and companies increasingly come in to obtain fresh ideas that can be provided by idea exchanges. So what are idea exchanges and how you can benefit from them?

Idea exchanges are places that bring together those who in need for fresh ideas and those creative folks who can give them. In other words, it’s a gateway offering creative services with the only difference that instead of a single idea, a customer gets access to a full scope of new ideas developed by tens of people working individually.

Exchanges can be different. Some of them have a narrow focus, for example, the ideas of creation and development of a small business or stock exchanges, where you can find everything. Exchanges can be both free and paid, famous and not, in general, idea exchanges are in abundance.

Free idea exchanges mostly offer ready-made ideas that can be accessed by any website visitor. However, there aren’t so many websites of this kind, as well as the ideas available, because it’s not that tempting to work for free hoping that some day customers will respond to “If you liked the idea, you may donate to the author.” Besides, the ideas on such websites are not fresh at all.

There are more websites that come with a narrow focus, for example websites offering the ideas in the sphere of business, such as the website Idea Gallery (www.devbusiness.ru). This website offers various ideas on business development, including the launch of new products and services, improvement the management system, optimization of business functions and operations

The website Small Business in Moscow (www.mbm.ru). Its name speaks for itself. It’s the information portal that allows you to keep abreast of recent events in a small business sphere in a capital. All in all, the mission of this website is not to share ideas, the website only features a section devoted to idea exchange, but there many helpful ideas can be found and used by those who think about starting up a business or developing the existing one.

Idea and discovery exchange (www.paragraf207.com). This website has a great many ideas and products in the fields of physics, astrophysics, chemistry, engineering, transport, communications, consumer goods, construction, energy, agriculture, medicine, toys, sports, UFO and just good advice.

There are too many websites of this kind. But profits received by their authors are quite poor. Another matter is websites that work in many directions, these are so-called general websites. As of today, we can mark out two biggest websites among the variety of such websites. They are е-Generator and Idea Lab.

The main principle of work of these exchanges is quite simple – a customer enters the website, places a request and receives responds from those who have ideas on this matter. The customer carefully considers the ideas, selects the best one and brings this idea to life by paying out a fee to the author. This way, it benefits the customer, who received a fresh idea, and the author, who could sell his/her ideas advantageously and of course, it benefits the website administration that managed to conduct a profitable deal.

So, how to buy/sell an idea? What are the prices? Let’s try to figure it out.

Let’s take a virtual company e-Generator as an example. This company is the biggest and most popular in this sphere.

So, you are a customer and you know what you’re going to do but have no idea when it comes to company’s name and slogan. Basically, you don’t need to rack your brains – with e-Generator, the whole Internet will think for you. All you need to do is register on the site as a customer, specify the required package of services, prepare a test, pay for the services provided and…wait for new ideas related to your business. The cost of company naming and slogan services varies from 12,000 to 35,000 rubles. The operating term may vary from 5 to 15 business days. When the term is over, over 50 new original ideas are offered to the customer and you need to select the one you like most. Generally, 30 business days are provided for consideration and choice of the idea.

The site also features authors rating. The higher the rating, the more experienced the author is. If the customer wants only experienced authors to work with his/her project, he or she can set up restrictions relating to the author’s rating. This way, only the most experienced authors with the highest ratings can access to this project.

There can be situations when, having viewed hundreds of ideas, customers cannot find the one they need. So what can be done about it? Unfortunately, nothing. The work is done and the fee will not be returned. But it happens very rarely. From hundreds of ideas, it’s possible to find the one you like. The main thing is to prepare a good test, so that the authors can approach the project with the maximum precision and proximity to your ideas. By the way, the second largest virtual giant Idea Generator is more loyal to these situations. If the customer is still unsatisfied, he or she receives 25% back. These 25% are paid as an author’s fee, whose idea won the competition. E-Generator allocates this amount among all the participants of the competition.

And what about the authors? To participate in the search of creative ideas capable to meet the needs of the most fastidious customer, you need to register on the site by specifying your data, your purse number and dive into creation of something new, innovative, interesting, and above all profitable.

The rating plays a very important role here. It can be improved depending on the author’s activity, the amount of successful ideas, i.e. activated ideas, the most interesting ideas. The current rating of the author is defined as the amount of points received for the past 20 completed creative projects (this rating includes all the projects, including those not participated by the author).

The payment is carried out soon after your idea has been selected as a winning idea.

Unselected ideas can be used for similar projects or placed in the idea bank. And mind there are no unwanted ideas!

The principle of work of all exchanges is practically the same. The main idea is to select the best idea. The authors’ task is to provide the most interesting idea.

There are also many English-language websites where your ideas may be helpful: Why Not? (http://www.whynot.net), Science Fair Idea Exchange (scienceclub.org) and many others.

As you can see, everything is as simple as can be. And money can be made out of thin air filled with ideas. Good luck to you in generating ideas and storming the Creative Olympus!

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