I done did it

All these years I have come up with 'great' ideas, only to find that someone beat me to the punch. And lately I've been binge watching Shark Tank... obsessively binge watching (which is one step further down the rabbit hole Alice).

How does one get a product to the marketplace? I have always wondered that. Perhaps it's because I don't have deep pockets and the prototype always seemed beyond my means. Or maybe because I don't know where to source materials. But in the last three days I have come up with three ideas, in addition to the other five I came up with earlier (mostly this month). And I feel like some of them have the potential to go big... but none of us have ugly babies, you know how it is.

I didn't want to use the company that advertises all over tv, the one George Foreman speaks for. It just seems expensive. And I'm not a very trusting person on the whole, so for some reason, having it on tv made it seem less trustworthy... But I did find a pretty cool company that doesn't charge an arm and a leg up front... the back end fees might not be so great, I don't really know yet because I don't know the industry that well, but I figure if I do well with one invention I can bankroll the next one on my own if I'm not happy. They're taking on a lot of the financial risk and doing the legwork, so for now, to test the waters, it seems fair.

The company is Edison Nation. I'm not an affiliate; if you want to sign up and are comfortable giving me your email address I get points toward a free submission and you get a free submission, but if you don't that's perfectly fine, you have their name and you can do as you wish. They charge $25 per submission, or you can join and pay $10/mo plus $20 per idea and submit that idea multiple times (they have a general submission or companies specify what they're looking for). Since I have 8 ideas it will save me money in the longrun to join, even if I can't afford to submit them all now.

They take care of all the patent searches and negotiate the licensing. They have an 8 step process and if you join you get feedback if your idea is rejected, otherwise you don't get feedback. If you join you can revise your idea and submit it to another search for free or resubmit it in the same category but it costs another $20, if you don't join every submission is $25. Still, for $20 that's a heck of a lot less than paying for a patent search, patent fees and trying to do it all yourself or pay another company thousands of dollars to do it all.

I'm kind of excited. I just submitted one of my ideas and can't wait to see what happens with it. I hope it blows up. Unfortunately I can't share the idea right now, but hopefully in the future you'll see a blog post in all caps about how excited I am that my product is on the market. :)

Until then, I'll be working on my business plan for MyPortablePMB... have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 2015 is going to be an awesome year, I can feel it in my bones! :)