Don't Let Your Ideas Sit on the Drawing Board

Ok so recently a friend (real one…and recent Facebook addition) ask me “So Larry, what’s up with this ObamaPaperPlate.com thing?”. There was no “LOL” but I’m sure he recognized the parody in the site. I went on to explain it anyway and thought I would share it here.

In the days just prior to Obama’s inauguration and all the building hype there was a the usual group of us having lunch in front of whatever news cast was on the tube. The over played Obama Commemorative Plate commercial was on once again. All political views aside we had made fun and laughed at the comedy of this commercial many times The dramatic representations of people nodding, smiling and appreciating their plate was certainly hard to take seriously. Always having one ear to the wall of niche opportunity I blurted out “I bet I could draw a face on a paper plate and someone would buy it”.

A website is born.

Creating the website is usually the easy part. I put it together in about a day or so and it was easy to write the spiel as we had discussed it over lunch many times always coming up with a few one liners to include. I drew a picture on a plate, snapped a few pictures and poof: site = done.

Classic problem: Site looks great but what good is it unless people see it?

Search Engine Optimization has become an entire industry and is incredibly competitive. What do you do if you have a little site and no budget? The information on how to do this is out there but the basics are: identify the key words you want to show up for, include them in your site in all the right places and back links. This article is not about SEO so I won’t go into all that but what I will mention is that I found some blogs/news sites and either sent them email or posted relevant comments and of course mentioned my site. I specifically targeted blogs and sites that were about or based in the DC area. A couple liked my site, mentioned it in a posting/story, etc and before I knew it went viral. It got 100’s and at its peak 1000’s of hits a day for a few months until the all the hype of the new President sort of dwindled. Believe it or not I sold a few plates and even sent a pair to Australia. The site also generates revenue through other means that I won’t go into detail about here but it has earned it’s keep. All from a silly lunch room conversation.

Perhaps the moral of this story is that if you don’t make things happen, who will? Obamapaperplate.com is by no means a million dollar idea but I saw it through to completion and reaped the benefits.

Good luck in all your ventures,

Larry
damnIneedAjob.com