By: Donalto Sybrius

Everyone has a rock solid idea and talks about it to someone. Stop there. Don't tell your friends, co-workers or anyone else. Don't tell Joe Shmoe that could give a rats ass or your best friend the lawyer with gobs of money that you think will help you fund your idea. Instead start with a business plan. This is the first step to really finding out if you are going to go through with your idea. The form is mind boggling long, but it does this for a reason. Every good idea out there was thought up by someone and you probably have competition.

Step two, know your competition. Walk around, look at where others may have ideas similar to yours and how you can capitalize on them. Why do market research from the ground up when someone else already has? Take for instance Netflix. Here they came up with a great idea and posted it for not one, but millions of people to see. Then one of the giants, Blockbuster saw what was happening, and came out with this. At this point you have hardcore competition that you can't fight against. You can only pray they buy you out. They won't. They'll wait until you fizz out of existence like Cherry Pepsi. They have money, they will wait. So sit down and take a nap and dream about how your product will shine through and stand above, then get a patent. There's different types of patents you can apply for, even one just for ideas. If you don't have a patent, at least do the research to see if someone out there has similar ideas as yours. You could always team up with them.

Make your product marketable. Find pretty colors to nourish inticement, get fun words to sell it, get creative by using old newspapers and glueing pieces onto your product to spell out it's name. Really, you don't need a lot of money just some markers, scissors, paper, a pen and a price tag. Throw in some chocolates to make it sweeter.

Finally once you've done this you can get your message out simply. Start with low cost ads like those you find in free newspapers. Open an ebay store and sell your product to see if anyone bites. Walk up to consumers you believe may be interested and give them your product -yes for free. People love free stuff. I remember in Clinique, women would line up to buy some item they didn't necessarily need to get a free goodie bag. Give them one of those. Pint size your product to see if the response is adequate to the price per product. But the easiest way to get your message out is to actually go door-to-door. Yes, people still do this. Doctors get visits daily from drug representatives touting their new drug. Walk around with a contract, pamphlets, your product and sell away. Nothing happens overnight, but if you don't put the effort in to actually go door-to-door, setting up an online shopping cart some of which are free, uhum, and do some leg work.

If you are an artist think of what you could do to market yourself. Walk around naked using your art to cover your body. Remember Wiley Coyote with his signs? Homeless people use them all the time, and I've heard they make some pretty decent change. Make your self some signs and advertise yourself. Get marker, get an old shirt and write your message on it. Get business cards and leave them in bathrooms, everyone uses stalls and there's hardly anything to read in there, sometimes even wipe with. At least when you get home your loved one will ask you what's written on your behind. That's how you get your message out, you get out of your four walls.