ADVICE: What Idea Are You Working On?

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.

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  • http://http:innovativebusinessgolf.com Scot Duke

    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 http://innovativebusinessgolf.com

  • http://techstbooks.wordpress.com Colin Dowling

    Antti,

    Have you looked at Shopify or zlio?

  • http://www.capendo.fi Antti

    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.

  • http://duzzio.com Daniel

    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.

  • http://bookdazzle.com/ nonlinear

    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.

  • http://boldlygoing.com James D Kirk

    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.

  • Chris S

    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?

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