bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Wouldn’t it be neat if there were such a thing?

A database where you could browse the problems, pick one and try to tackle solving it.

Clearly you need to define when something becomes a ‘problem’ – I suggest based on the average detrimental effect it has per person world wide.

On that basis some of the top issues would still be:

• Poverty
• Sustainability & environmental concerns
• Education
• Peak oil?

You see when posed with a challenge humanity fights to overcome it (hey we’ve come this far right?) so why not expose these problems in a direct light.  Arm people with the constraints, barriers and requirements of  a solution and let them figure out how to fix it.

No matter how much drugs Customs find, dealers are still looking for new ways to hide it.

And why are they doing it? The allure of the wealth.

I see this as the equivalent of a price war in a downward spiral.  As adept as customs officials are they aren’t nearly as motivated as the drug dealers who keep one step ahead of them.

What do I propose to end this? Crowdsourcing.

Open up the problem to the public, give them the constraints Customs operate under and what the avenues are.  Get the public to help you figure 101 ways to import drugs in almost anything that is coming into the country.

Then Customs can get ahead of the game.  Sure the public will reveal new ways that haven’t been utilised yet but (in theory) those methods would have been exploited at some point in time.

So stop chasing your tails and take control of the game.

Given the huge amount of fun I had last time with Pay What You Want Marketing Advice  I have decided to bring it back for good.

Why did I do it as an experiment? To limit my downside of course.  As I found there was no downside, it was all a challenge and hugely fun.  So now it’s back…

For those who are new the gist is:

You email me with your problems, questions, questions on strategy.

Anything Internet Marketing related.

Who is this suited for? Any kind of business, maybe your a small business who hasn’t ventured online, a tourism business, owner operator, b2b, b2c….

You probably have made cuts of your marketing expenditure.

And so you should if it has questionable returns.

BUT with internet marketing you can measure your returns. Down to the dollar.

If you know how.

So to help clear misreprentations about it and encourage spending in internet marketing I am doing this.

The catch? Well the catch is I ask you to pay me what you think my information to help you out is worth to you. If its worth nothing pay nothing, if its worth $250 pay that. Up to you, no pressure, my aim is to help you.

I just want to repeat that, my aim is to help you!

Basically you email me [email protected] with the subject line ‘pay what you want’, I give you a hand, you pay me what you think it’s worth via paypal.  It is probably the best way to get advice from me without committing to a contract.

Please note a few things:

1) Give me some background information about your company, clients (in the email).  I can clear up to several thousand emails in a busy week so if you have all the information in the email helps me out (vs a web address for more info).

2) If I help you, could you post feedback in the comments below (good or bad, mostly good Im sure)

3) Forward to friends this post to help them out.

The Best Ideas are Free we know that.

But often in a business scenario to stimulate the idea generation we need to part with some dollars.

A few crowdsourcing sites have popped up, the idea is to tap into a large crowd to generate ideas for marketing, business and general problems.

Fantastic model.

Yet for Marketing I think its slightly overengineered and appeals to a slightly lemon market.

That is those that have the time to invest in the site may not necessarily be that savvy (exception to the rule is those that commit time to invest in it strategically).  

Typically the target market are very time poor and do not have the time or resources to invest into yet another social resource.

I think a simple email list suffices.

Create a list of interested parties, email then occaisonally with a marketing problem, provide them with a bounty.

Keep it simple.