Giving Advice for a Price: You Could Sell Ideas on the Web
IdeaMarket wants you as a customer and a partner.
The new Web site buys and sells documents aimed at entrepreneurs and small businesses. The folks who operate the site hope to offer hundreds of articles, reports and other documents that you can purchase to download or read online at prices from $5 to $50.
Unlike the World Wide Web in general, this site is easy to navigate. Everything you need is organized by categories such as SOHO/Small Business, Finance/Investment, Business Travel, and Computers and Technology. The site is at https://www.ideamarket.com/
Unlike most Web sites, this one charges you for the information you read. But if IdeaMarket helps you quickly pinpoint critical information, it could turn out to be the biggest bargain on the Net.
As reported in The Times, IdeaMarket recently laid off most of its staff and scaled back its original plan to provide a broad range of information services, instead concentrating on business and computing information. This is a risky business because consumers have been reluctant to pay to download information on the Web. Nevertheless, it’s a noble experiment that’s worth watching and, perhaps, participating in.
Articles and reports include “Raising Money Successfully: Secrets of an Entrepreneur,” by computer industry entrepreneur Bill Gross, chairman and founder of Pasadena-based Idealab, the parent company of IdeaMarket. This 3,200-word article, which costs $19.95, promises to “increase your chances of success by using tips and lessons that [Gross] learned over the past 15 years.”
Like all articles on the site, you don’t have to spend any money to get a flavor of what the author is saying. A free preview gives you a table of contents and some hints, as well as information about the author.
You’ll also find a $5 report about writing a business plan and a 40-question quiz on things to consider before taking the leap into self-employment for $10.
Everything I read on the site was competently written by qualified authors, but whether it’s worth the asking price is an interesting question. You can find similar articles in magazines and newspapers and on free Web sites. A few minutes of research with Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and other Internet search engines yielded listings of hundreds of small-business sites. But it took a couple of hours to narrow them down to a few good ones, which I’ve posted at https://www.larrysworld.com/bizlinks.htm. But even with that head start, you’ll still find yourself spending lots of time looking for what you need. If sites like IdeaMarket can short-circuit that research route, then they are well worth paying for.
My main reason for writing about IdeaMarket isn’t to sell you on buying information but to get small-business entrepreneurs to consider selling their expert advice to others. If you run a successful small business or have learned some hard-won lessons from a not-so-successful venture, you might be able to help others by sharing your experience. And if IdeaMarket is successful, you could even earn some extra money in the process.
Here’s how it works: You click the “contribute” tab at the top of the Web site, which takes you to a page where you can submit a content proposal. You’ll need to write a short (about 200-word) preview of the document and submit your bio, a proposed submission date and some other information. The company will respond to your proposal within 48 hours and, if it is accepted, you’ll be asked to submit the complete document on the date you specified. If the article appears exclusively on IdeaMarket, you’ll get 50% of the revenue earned from the sale of your document. If it’s a nonexclusive arrangement, you’ll earn 35%. You can switch between exclusive and nonexclusive after the document is posted, Acquisitions Director Roger Jackson said.
You don’t have to be a polished writer to contribute to IdeaMarket. “We’re looking for people willing to share their experience in setting up or running a business,” said Jackson. Someone who has purchased a franchise, for example, could write a report about “the actual reality of buying and running the business versus what they were led to believe when they signed on.”
Jackson is looking for information that is well written, but he’s willing to work with contributors who don’t have the skills to produce polished material. “If necessary, we’ll reorganize and rewrite the material if the basic information is truly useful.”
Submitting something to IdeaMarket is a crapshoot. My guess is that most authors will earn little, if anything. But if you have something truly useful to say and IdeaMarket can generate an audience for that material, then you and the people who run the Web site stand a chance of making some real money.
Even if you don’t make a lot of money, it’s an opportunity for people in business to share their experiences with others.
Perhaps more important, it’s a chance to think about your own experiences in a structured way and work with a professional editor to articulate what you have learned. By posting your material on IdeaMarket’s Web site, you are exposing yourself and your business to the site’s visitors. Anyone, including people who don’t choose to purchase your article or report, can read a summary and a bit about you and your company at no charge.
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You may write to Lawrence J. Magid at magid@latimes.com and visit his Web site at https://www.larrysworld.com
