Valentine’s Day has come and gone. It is an official day for all kinds of things-the good, the bad and the ugly. It is a period of love and sharing, marriage proposals, heart breaks, two asides, serious fights (especially when a cheating partner gets caught) and sometimes black eyes.
It is also a season of giving and receiving.
In fact people are more receptive during valentine because giving is a serious activity of Valentine’s Day.
So a lot of websites and individuals and businesses will be giving out stuff like gifts and discounts around this period. People expect them.
Bloggers are not left out in the giving and receiving spree.
Lots of people will be giving out (discount) on lots of paid stuff like e-books, soft wares and more. Special valentine offers will also be hold sway too.
People will even search for these free gifts online.
The big question is :
“How Do You Give Out Stuff And How Will People Find Out About These Free Valentine Stuff Online”
THE PROBLEM:
If I were to ask you how you intend to share and distribute your gifts online, what would you tell me?
Am sure you may say any of these.
- Save it on my blog, website for download from my server
- Tweet it on twitter and share it on other social media
- Ask other bloggers to blog about it
Blah, blah, blah, blah…there are so many things you could do.
The results may be great; people will still find your products and gifts but this can be made more effective.
What about those people finding free valentine stuff online, how effective can they find stuff?
- A search in Google.
- from blogs
- from social bookmarking websites
- on twitter
etc
This still works but the gifts are scattered all over the place.
(I googled up valentine gifts and found lots of websites giving valentine e-presents, cards and lots of other stuffs but they never had offline gifts and more stuffs included)
Before I talk about the idea, I love to explain that a valentine gift can be anything. It could be an e-book, a software, an electronic or physical goods, a service offline or online, money or even a discount for an offline or online product or service.
THE VALENTINE GIFT SOLUTION
When something is called a gift, people are open to receiving it because that the natural thing to do.
So what if there was a website that aggregated free gifts from givers and made it easy for receivers find them.
This website could be describe as the digg.com for all kinds of valentine gifts which only operates from the first day of the year to the day after Valentine’s Day.
It will be a place where all kinds of valentine gifts from everywhere offline and online could be aggregated.
DETAILS OF THE IDEA
I know there are many websites that help distribute all kinds of free stuff on the internet, from e-books, soft wares and more. The only problem with these places is that what they give out or aggregate are free all year round and they are not called valentine free gifts.
A discount given out as a valentine gift during valentine only will likely get more attention and be valued more than a discount available all year round.
There are some reasons why this is so.
- People will look for free stuff like that around this period(more search and demand)
- It’s a valentine gift ,people will likely receive it
- Valentine comes ones in a year –scarcity
Here are they steps that could be taken in setting up a something like this.
- Set up a website.
- Allow people to sign up and list free gifts free of charge
- 3. People searching and downloading the gifts will do so free of charge and don’t need to register
- Different categories will exist for all listed free gifts
- Different front pages will exist for different categories
- Givers of gifts will provide links to the electronic gifts on their servers or other servers through their websites
- Free gift givers offline will link people to their offers by linking to their website or addresses where the free gifts can be gotten. Or to a page where the details about the free gifts can be gotten.
OTHER FEATURES
- For marketing, socials web sharing tools will be added to the pages where the products are listed
- A vote up, vote down and bury voting system will be added to the website to reduce mediocre product listing and spam in the system
- An embed code system for every product listed
WILL IT SUCCEED?
I strongly believe it would?but you never know till you try.
1. Fills A Vacuum
There are many free websites for listing freebies online but there is no website that handles free valentine gifts for all kinds( offline and online). This will fill a vacuum and will help people find real valentine gifts online (not just e-cards and e-gifts)
2. IT SOLVES A PROBLEM
The internet has solved the problem of distribution but we still do face the problems of finding where to get some of the distributed goods. The valentine day is a special case. It happens once in a year, it is a special day.
People will appreciate this service because it will help people find free valentine offers offline and online.
People will now know where to find great free valentine gifts.
3. SCARCITY AND THE FREE LUNCH
People love the free lunch and people would value a free launch that is only available for a short while.(maybe)
The website will be opened only from January 1st of every year to the 15th of February of the same year.
This will add a kind of scarcity and mystery to the website and service. Something similar to the service offered by www.woot.com but still very different.
OTHER REASONS OR BENEFITS TO USERS INCLUDE
- It will send traffic to the website and blogs of the givers of gift
- It will help the givers of gifts expose people to their businesses and services they provide
- Feed back on the free gifts given (via the voting system)
HOW THIS WEBSITE CAN MAKE MONEY
There are many ways money can be made on this website.
A few are:
1. PREMIUM ACCOUNTS
Everyone can enlist free products and goods for free but if you want your goods to be on the front page, you pay for a certain amount via a bid system.
This is a premium account.
When people search for free stuff, the ones voted high will come up first but the premium paid gifts will appear on the sides(kind a like the way Google Adwords adverts)
- Third party ads …Google adsense and other third party advert programs
- Direct advertisement from advertisers
- Sales of affiliate products
- Get bought over by some big company(okay this may never happen ,but you never know)
OTHER NOTES
You can actually use this same idea for other holidays. (I actually had this idea last Christmas when I wanted to give out a humor book titled my first stupid book) on my experimental blog.
Okay, that’s enough.
It’s now your turn.
What do you think? Could this work?
Your response please.
These steps also can be applied on every special day like mother’s day, father’s day and etc..thanks for the tips..
yea Faz,
it can be used for any kind of special day….
Howdy, I wondered if you could truly do just this and not have another “normal” job? This is not just like a part time 2nd job is it? I really don’t want to work a standard job anymore. Really.
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!