Last year I wrote a post titled “I Will Buy Your Idea“. It was a tongue-in-cheek post that was trying to make this point:
Ideas have no monetary value. The worth is in the implementation.
Dane Carlson picked it up and posted this on his Business Opportunities Weblog:
“Finally, someone recognizes the true value of a great idea: Jackson Miller is buying them!
Don’t plan on paying the rent with just one, though, because he’s only paying $0.02 per original idea. Trust me, this is the best deal that you’ll get, without a great implementation!
Then a funny thing happened, my post became the #1 search result on Google for several searches about buying ideas. Dane’s post is #2. Since then I have had a steady stream of people contacting me trying to sell me their idea.
Many times the confusion seems to be from people who don’t speak english very well. This is my fault because my post is sarcastic and uses some American figures of speech. Others are probably from people who didn’t bother actually reading my post (but they took the time to find my email address on this site to email me).
These offers to sell ideas are a minor annoyance. The thing is, no one seems too eager to unseat my spot for searches about buying ideas. I think the fact that I have held the top spot for so long is an indication that there is no market for ideas.
At the time of my original post there were 5700 ideas in The Global Ideas Bank; the owner of that site seemed very willing to take me up on my offer to pay $0.02 per idea for a whopping total of $114.
So maybe this post will take the #1 spot and I can stop getting these emails (it is a minor annoyance). The offer to purchase ideas is over. I have enough ideas of my own.
