Invention posting sites are gaining popularity, but do you gain any benefit from them? In my opinion these sites feed off of the Inventor’s hopes of getting discovered by a major player in their particular target market and making millions.
The web is flooded with these websites all claiming to be the place every Inventor should list their idea/product to get noticed, receive funding, and make sales. They say list with us for free or they charge a monthly fee and companies and investors will find your product. Some offer paid services to build your presentation page, make a pamphlet, sell sheet or other material.
Some make the pitch saying they are an international marketplace, as if they have this special connection no one else has. There is nothing special to being international anymore. You get international exposure just by being on the internet. I get contacted by people all across the world that find my site using Google or some other search engine. I didn’t do anything special that makes me stand out over the next website or buy a spot on Google so that I show up first in a web search.
Ask yourself this, do you really think that Stanley Black and Decker, Kraft, Mattel, Craftsman, Rubbermaid, and all the other mainstream companies spend their time surfing these idea posting sites? I put in the search topic on Bing “invention Buyers” my results were 1-10 of 748,000 results. I know a number of them are repeats of the same companies so lets say you only have actually 748 of those as the correct number of sites worldwide offering these services. Do you think any business like Stanley Black and Decker has the resources or cares to have their staff look through 748 websites for a new product they can sell? Why should they even bother when they have Inventors contacting them daily wanting them to review their ideas? The answer is they don’t.
I looked at one of these companies website and they had 18 categories of products you can look through. If they have a minimum of 10 ideas/products listed per category you have 180 products to review for just this one website. Now multiply that by the 748 companies offering this type of service and you get 134,640 products to review. So, how would a toy company find you out of this large pool of ideas/products that cover such a wide variety of markets?
Plus, that number will not stay static since you are adding new products as more Inventors join these sites. So, again I ask does any one company have the resources or need to review these products, even monthly? Your chances of getting picked up from one of these sites are small at best. You would be better served pushing your product yourself and targeting the companies you want to go after. Lets not forget that Inventors will post their unprotected ideas on these sites not realizing they are doing public disclosure.
I have my own website http://www.rogerbrown.net that I include in my emails to companies or can tell them when talking with a company. I can direct them to it easily and don’t have to worry about them sifting through other websites and advertisements.