The Origin of an Idea

This is just a short true story about the origin of an idea. It starts with a book that I am writing on unusual ways to make money. My editor wanted a resource section at the end of each chapter, which, as it turns out, was a great idea. I list a book or two on the subject of that chapter and several websites that are relevant. The chapters themselves are limited to two pages each in order to fit 101 of them into the book along with interviews and other content.

As I am writing the book, though, I come to the occasional chapter that really requires more information. For example, the one on how to make money with rack merchandising could use my personal story of trying to place racks of earrings in stores. But there isn't room. Other chapters need more "how to" advice but don't have room. The resource section covers this usually, but there are times when I can't find any decent resources online. What can I do?

This is the origin of my idea then. It occurred to me that if there are not any good resources online I can create some. I created a page on all the ways to make money giving a way e-books, for example, for a chapter on making money with e-books, and then I put the URL in the resource section of that chapter. But because I will probably do this with other books, and there are other authors who need resources to point their readers to, I did it on a new website.

It took three hours and $10 to buy the name, create six pages and have the site live as of October 2010. It is:

The Bullet Point .com - Making Books Powerful With Online Content

I will have pages there for my own purposes, which will be monetized, of course, and if other authors want me to I will put up their pages for free (in order to make money from ads on them) or for a fee I will research and write pages as they need them.

Some lessons here:

1. Use problems to create new ideas.

Solving my own problem might also make me some money. A problem is almost always an opportunity if looked at in the right way.

2. Build on your existing skills and knowledge.

I already know how to make websites quickly and cheaply, so this is a good direction to go in solving a problem and implementing new ideas.

3. Take the first step.

There is momentum created by any action. By the time I took the twenty minutes to research and register the domain name, I felt like getting a few pages up. Many ideas never become more than a passing though because that first small step isn't taken.

4. Try many things.

Our sites succeed and fail, but I'm glad we built enough to have the successful ones in the mix. Implementing many low-risk ideas (I have risked $10 and five hours on this one so far) increases the odds of one of them succeeding. Cheap implementation means you can try more times.

That was the origin of my idea. I will try to remember to report back here in a year to update this page with the results.