Free The Ideas

Follow that account if you're a web worker who wants short term 1-8 hour gigs that pay $10+ per hour.

The idea here is to eventually make it HARO for short term web work.

For now? This is the Minimum Viable Product. Testing out the idea. It's all free. I need a service like this and I think other entrepreneurs do too. 

My idea is a little bit different, but it's close enough that it's not something that excites me right now.

Although, now that I think about it, I guess you could use any 100ml shampoo bottle and fill it with booze to get the same effect.

OK, I just talked myself out of it, but I'm posting anyway.

Most people know I'm atheist.

So the point of the site is to buy votes to choose my religion. Based on the number of votes and the total dollar amount I will practice that religion for X length of time.

Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, Wiccan ... well, anything is fair game.

I'd follow whatever tenets set for that religion. Including praying. Including attending services. Including anything and everything.

I'm thinking a vote will cost $10, including an optional link to a website/twitter on a Voters page.

And I'm thinking every $100-$300 raised will equal 1 day following that religion. I might have a lot of expenses. Maybe I'll have to go to Mecca! Maybe I'll have to quit my businesses. I don't know what could happen.

If you feel like running with this idea before I have a chance to run with it please feel free.

If you're unaware, the NBA is in lockout mode. The players and the owners aren't anywhere close to a deal and the season is delayed. And, of course, it revolves around money.

One issue is that the owners want to split revenue 50/50 and the players will hear none of that. Which I don't understand. True, as a superstar, you bring in a lot of money. Also true, as is the case in this lockout, the owners are responsible for paying you that money and taking huge monetary risks in the process. 

50/50 makes sense.

But the issue I've always had with the NBA is when a player sucks, has a good season, becomes a free agent, then signs an absurd contract and never delivers. Or a player, like Grant Hill, becomes a superstar, signs a huge contract, gets injured, but still gets paid every penny of that contract. Grant Hill made $100 million plus on the Orlando Magic back in the day and was constantly injured. It was ridiculous. If you get seriously injured like Grant Hill there should be some kind of stipulation that your contract is done with besides some percentage + medical costs.

My idea is this: players sign percentage contracts with no salary cap. Instead of getting $20 million/year you get say 30% (if you're a superstar) or 2-5% if you're a roll player. If the team is doing well financially you get paid more. If the team is doing poorly you get paid less. Deservedly so.

But as a bonus ... since some players earn the league a lot of money ... players should also get a significant percentage of player-specific merchandise revenue. Example, sell $10 million in jerseys and other merchandise directly related to you. Let's say the profit on that is $5 million. League gets 34%, team gets 33%, player gets 33%. So the player gets $1.6 mil extra regardless of what his playing contract entails.

None of this will ever happen, of course. And I understand, due to different markets making more money simply based on location (NYC, LA, Miami), it's not completely fair. But whatever. It's just an idea. :)

So how about one that does? Instead of charging 50% to the restaurant, charge them a set fee to run a sale. Or something like $1 per coupon sold. That way the customer still gets a great deal, the restaurant doesn't lose their ass, and the website still makes a nice amount of money. This would be a much smaller company than Groupon, of course. 10,000 employees? No way. Maybe 2 employees per city. Likely not even that many.

There's probably something like this already but I don't keep up with Groupon copycats. There are far too many. (Like I said, not a defensible business model, but being first to market definitely helps them.)

Last Thursday I sent an e-mail to my Freedom Fighters subscribers.

I sent 3 different e-mails. Aweber allows me to split my list up. I split it 34%, 33%, 33%.

The first group got the e-mail at 7:52am EST.

Second group: 9:57am EST.

Third group: 3:51pm EST.

Everything else about the e-mails was an exact copy. I was only testing open rates for different send times.

Email 3 did horrible in comparison to the other 2. ~20% less opens and ~20% less clicks.

So let's compare E-mails 1 and 2:

E-mail 2 had 5% more unique opens than E-mail 1. That's pretty good. BUT ...

E-mail 1 had 13% more click throughs than E-mail 2. 

So although more people read E-mail 2, more people clicked links in E-mail 1.

Since I'm going for engagement E-mail 1 wins.

My thinking is this: E-mail 1 is sent early in the morning when people get to work. This is "waste time at work" time. So they're more likely to click and browse.

E-mail 2 is sent later in the morning so people might take a quick break to open it, but not have time to browse, so no clicks.

I'm going to test these same time-frames against each other tomorrow to see if similar things happen.

Point is: test everything. Make it simple. 

The amount of it being thrown away every day must be absolutely astronomical.

Is it possible to recycle?

Can hotels switch to a "if you need soap ask for it policy?" or is that too far?

Maybe switching to liquid handsoap as opposed to little bar soaps?

Note: In case you're not aware, most tattoo ink is not vegan hence the need for something like this.

It would be nice to include specific dietary requirements based on what's readily available in various locations. "If you're in X country eat Y after a workout" type of thing.

Very niche and maybe there's no market for this except for me.