This idea caught my eye, although so far execution consists of nothing more than a blog post on their site: payittome. Readers who want something take a picture of it along with the price and submit it to the site. Pictures will be chosen from those submitted and will appear on the home page. Advertisers can buy the item for the person, associating their brand with the item, and the picture will be linked to the advertiser.
Like the original milliondollarhomepage, this will only work if enough buzz is generated that lots of people actually go to the site. If payittome presents a well designed website and is able to get a few advertisers lined up to make sure early entrants get some free stuff, people will likely show up en masse. That will draw more advertisers, and the virtuous cycle continues.
It’s not clear that payittome is taking a cut to generate revenue. They should be, on the off chance that this is a hit. Of course, the buzz for this has officially started, and the site isn’t live yet. Time to get to work, guys.
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Kind of a weird idea - plus points are the invention shown, but to be honest I can’t see this getting any traction whatsoever.
Assuming he does a good build, I think traction will explode. It costs customers only the time to put in an entry. Direct marketers will be able to build a relationship with a specific person who, if made happy, will virally spread their product/idea/widget. The in house marketing people should be careful, though - they are the ones who, if they take the leap, will need to do a bunch of leg work to keep up. This could be really interesting.
It is kind of weird like Baby Names #1 said. But I dont understand how the person is getting paid. So I put a picture and upload it with a price, the advertiser likes it and buys it and uses the picture for that site? Well, I guess I am dumb kinda finding it hard to grasp the idea, help me out please
Ritu - when you submit a picture you also submit a paypal account, the advertiser pays into that.
Yes, but is he paying me for the use of the picture and like you said in the post they might purchase the product for me but how does the advertiser benefit in the process? Thanx Mike
Say, if I put a picture of a bag from Gucci and the advertiser buys it for me and the picture links to a site that sells Louis Vuitton ( since the pic links to the advertiser ) wouldn’t that be fraud, I hope you get what I am trying to say, hope I am not making a fool out of myself
Submitted. Who wants to buy me some beer?
Ritu: You’re not submitting a pic that links to a site, you’re just submitting a pic of what you want the advertiser to fund.
So if it’s a handbag you desire, then attach a pic of the specific product you want to payittome@gmail.com.
The advertiser is not paying you for the use of the picture, they are paying you to fund your purchase of what the picture depicts, and especially the exposure generated from funding it.
Thanx Json, hmmmmmm finally it went into my fat head and now it seems like a good idea, just depends on the hype but its on techcruch so they already got one
Ritu: We’ll see. I think this idea can work as long as people aren’t too greedy at first. For example, I asked for beer money (Bud Light 30 pack cans).
The more steam this site generates, the more expensive items people can ask for and receive.
Guys, this seem strange to me. I don’t get it. It’s very susceptible to fraud. I think the business should be easy for an average person to understand.
Oh! Finally! An easy way to get my comic fix!
Sarah: Errm, it was pretty easy for me to understand. What’s so hard for you to understand?
uh, are you actually covering a “blog post”? where is this site headed? monster.com is on the block (boston rumor mill) - can’t you get a lead on that?
weird idea
So — say I want a new Lincoln MKZ to match my Lincoln Navigator seen here:
http://www.darcfyber.com/darc.html
All I do is take a picture of one and submit it?
And maybe someone will buy it for me?????
This must be one of the strangest things ever…but heck — I hope it works!
Lot’s of “unique” business ideas of late centered around new ad models. Seems very familiar. I don’t know of many experiments like this that have succeeded. Does anyone else?
http://www.congoo.com- Congoo Vertical News Communities
Forget the point for the moment that advertisers are actually going to buy something or a portion of something for people - what exactly is the motivation for me to come back to that site and look at the advertisers that buy into this? Is this ANOTHER social network?
Michael, I appreciate that you love entrepreneurs but this idea is a little far-fetched even for TC readers.
Whether this works or not remains to be seen, but I love creativity and wish it does work and succeed. Thinking outside the box is fuel to innovations.
The one issue they do need to solve is how to draw people back that did not get their wish fulfilled after a few tries. The model is based on it being sticky to generate the traffic needed to attract interest from advertisers, so its a catch-22.
I have been brewing a creative/outside the box model (just as, or more creative than this) for the last 7 months and need developer partners. So I am biased towards creative ideas and outside the box thinking such as this. Best of luck to them.
Michael,
http://www.viavol.com is a working site on the similar idea.
With viavol, a user submits the bookmarks of the items he wants to buy into viavol and advertisers/businesses deliver targeted advertisements to the user, which might enclose the discount sales on the same items or the similar items, which, in theory, delivers a win-win situation and optimal market result.
As you said, this kind idea works only with large enough traffic, which a startup typically fails to generate.
@20: You mean like a wishlist that allows advertisers to target those people that have wished for their products? Hmm, how do you maintain your advantage over the wishlist providers (esp. Amazon) that already have established businesses, business relationships, and wishlists. All amazon would have to do is enable an option on their wishlist that allows Amazon to provide that data to the businesses that have the power to discount products on these wishlists. I bet some product managers at Amazon would love it if you proved the concept for them.
i am now going out to take a pic of my future airbus A380.
you can print whatever you want on it, i don’t mind.
To me it seems like a silly idea…i hope i am proved wrong….
Well, I have to say, it pays to be an early adopter. This morning after reading this, I went ahead and sent in my photo for Season 1 of Heroes on DVD. I just got back from lunch and sitting in my in box is a paypal payment notification for the $40.00. So, genius idea or completely nuts, if nothing else, he’ll be getting at least one more blog post out of it when I write about it in a little bit.
I’m so confused, is it just me?
I think it works like this:
You post a picture of ANYTHING (not just something you want) with an AMOUNT OF MONEY that you want.
Then a marketer pays the amount of money that you want, and as a result, their product picture shows up on the site, along with how much money they paid to have their image listed.
So, for example, say NBC wanted to have a picture of the Heroes season 1 dvd on the page, they paid 40 dollars and there it is.
Seems to me this could be gamed pretty easy by submitting and then purchasing my own submissions. Wonder what they are doing to prevent that.
It is like milliondollarhomepage, only user generated. Advertisers can buy whatever is requested by the visitors to payittome and have their urls listed on the image of whatever they paid for.
Say I uploaded the image of Audi R8 and Michael Arrington bought it. So now R8’s picture will have “paid by TC” or whatever. I think that is how it works…Now, Michael you’ll pay for my R8, right?
A big reason for the success of milliondollarhomepage is the Google pageRank that the site has. And it successfully draw all the synergy into just one page. I don’t see payittome has this kind of potential since it constantly changes.
Like being mentioned above, the system can be easily gamed since it is just a middleman.
It is a neat concept though. I think it should start with a list of pre-selected products for a user to choose from, like DVDs, games and iWhatever, and go from there. There will be no prank post, and advertisers can also target better.
What if I post goatse? What do I get then?
that is bizare! What if someone just takes pics of random things that are too expensive of they abuse the system? Would be cool if it really worked
Its a pretty nifty idea and might work.
Well, I posted mine. Or sent it in rather. Pro Flickr account, which I think is pretty humble compared to the iPhones and $1200 LCDs that people are posting. Those might work in due time, but for now I imagine sub-$100 items will have a better chance of converting. Wish me luck! =)
Of course, you’ll have a better chance of getting an advertiser response if you request something that they can lay hands on quickly and cheaply. Low-price mass-produced product, especially brand-sensitive stuff, would be good. Or how about what’s often referred to as ’schwag’ - the kinds of branded items that get handed out at trade shows, like baseball caps, towels, stickers, t-shirts etc.
You’re probably not going to get a car out of it, but you might be able to get branded hupcaps, car stickers, fuzzy dice or even seat covers.
I’m not sure about the responses to requests for bargain basement brand items. Nike might not send you a pair of shoes, but would Dunlop?
I think that this idea will work because I can see the site has already started receiving more and more traffic. Anything cool like this spreads in the blogosphere like fire and as more people get their wish fulfilled, Payittome will receive more traffic.
More traffic = More wishes getting fulfilled = Their success.
Got my beer money. Wh00t!
Thanks to http://www.webdnabusiness.com !
Json, I saw that. Gratz! Have fun, and on a Friday no less. I’m hoping mine picks up–I tried to make the ad stand out a bit. Plus it’s el cheapo.
Travis,
Is that “I Want To Go Pro flickr with 4 puppies” your wish?
If yes, I hope somebody is gonna send the amount pretty soon. Mine is yet to appear on the site and I don’t think it’s gonna appear anytime soon.
Sounds like Robin Hood Fund (http://www.robinhoodfund.com) but with a different funding mechanism.
I have a really a gnarly backyard that is in need of some serious design and landscaping, might as well give it a shot…