

How To Find And Choose An Idea For Your Project - mootothemax
http://tbbuck.com/how-to-find-and-choose-an-idea-for-your-project/

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fatalerrorx3
Cool article and interesting suggestions on where to come up with ideas...I
tend to come up with ideas while I'm in the middle of working on projects. My
most recent idea came to me several weeks ago when I found out I had several
Giftcards from last year and had a painful time trying to get the balances on
all of them, and then GiftcardMate was born.

Isn't the mother of invention necessity? Need something, and then make it
happen!

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fatalerrorx3
I see that you yourself have had many necessities based on your profile, so
I'm sure you have no shortage of ideas

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mootothemax
Hehe, it's true: I do come up with a lot of ideas. _Viable_ ones, on the other
hand...

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fatalerrorx3
Yeah, I've had many ideas over the years, some of which never made any
ground...this new night-time/weekend project I'm working on I think could be
really useful though as a lot of people tend to get many Giftcards around the
holidays and managing balances on all of them can be a pain -- what are your
thoughts? Viable or not? Monetization could be done by offering a buy-back
service on Giftcards that users don't want, by offering 80% of face value and
then reselling to make a small profit while charging less than the cards
actual value

I'd be interested in hearing your opinions -- my post last night seemed to get
no responses, I'm really just looking for some constructive criticism on the
idea and validation or invalidation, either way really

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fatalerrorx3
That's the thing, I suck at marketing.. programmers aren't known for Design or
Marketing skills and that's been my biggest hurdle. The incentive to use the
service based on the giveaway would work, but I don't know what marketing
channels to pursue. It would remain a free service, but making money in the
future would be to offer a buy-back program whereby the users can sell their
unwanted Giftcards for cash (less than the cards face value) and then I would
mark it up a bit while still making it less than the cards actual value, so
that would be the monetization plan, but again marketing for me seems
impossible and always has been

