Great News Matt – Thanks for all EN’s hard work. :)

GO MATT !!!!!!!!!!!

All non-specific searches or theme for each?

Sounds like great news. How will this program effect the previous ASOTV search and the inventors who are finalists waiting for ther ideas to be presented?

Excellent!

will this be for new entries also?

For the previous ASOTV search, we are still presenting to ASOTV partners and we will contact you if there is a interest in your invention.

Here’s a link to the Pitchmen site about what makes a successful ASOTV product:

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/pitchmen/make-milli...

Yes Linda. This is definitely for new ideas. While you are welcome to opt-in an existing idea into one of the new quarterly Live Product Searches, the goal is to continue to find new, innovative ASOTV ideas, test the best and take the best of the best to market!

i just came up with this idea that would be perfect for the ASOTV search yesterday, but i havent made it so its not tested and testing will take time. So since its quarterly, i will have time to get it together for later on?

Matt / Marla – When is the deadline for the next quarter ASOTV LPS? I am honored to be a finalist in this ASOTV LPS. How much time do you expect it will take from reciept of prototype to media test results? Thanks!

Eric,
All of the details (including the deadline) will be posted when we launch the first official ASOTV under this program. I believe it will launch on Tuesday.

As far as time to expect from prototype to media test results, there is no average time. Media tests don’t always involve a single offer. Sometimes, we need to refine and retest several times before we get the final results. Also, the prototype (or “bonus products”) may need to be modified for specific offers. I can tell you that our goal is to “win” or “fail” as quickly and efficiently as possible since there are so many opportunities to test.

Congrats by the way on being a finalist for our ASOTV 2!

This sounds like a great concept for EN and an excellent opportunity for inventors. This site gets more and more exciting every month. I’m strongly considering submitting several products. Would be ideal if EN considered increasing revenue percentages for products/ideas that are patented (or patent pending) and significantly further developed.

The new ASOTV Live Product Search has launched!

Details: www.edisonnation.com/drtv

Margaret,
Thanks for the site link, it was very helpful!

Awesome! I made it to Red 6 on the last ASOTV… maybe this time I’ll have better luck!

I really like the idea of this ongoing product search- my favorite thing about Pitchmen is seeing all the products. Even if something may not be profitable, there are still some really neat ideas out there.

Here’s what I don’t get about Edison Nation. Why is it incumbent on us to re-submit our ideas under different searches? There can’t be that many good ideas out there. Edison Nation has already gone through the evaluation process once so it knows the reasons why a product did not make it through the first time. We do not know whether a product was rejected due to a slight mismatch or whether the product has no hope to ever make it. All they need to do is keep notes on each submission in their data base. They could then contact people to resubmit. I know this involves integrity not to lure in people they feel don’t have a chance, but they’re in the integrity business. Surely fleecing people of $25 is nowhere near their best interest of getting a product to market. Would Edison Nation just leave a product they know would make it just because an inventor wasn’t sure he wanted to risk $25 a second time. I know, I know, get the gold membership but with the evaluation process taking so long, I save more money not being a gold member. Even then you must resubmit which forces Edison nation to handle way more applications that have no chance just because the applicants aren’t risking $25. I know, I know $25 is nothing for all the work they do and I suspect even the monthly gold fee doesn’t cover it. They’re obviously looking for good ideas. Why blind themselves purposefully when they can still get the fees from people based on their recommendations. I already submit multiple ideas per submission because it allows them the option of choosing which one they’ll go with. I assume if they see more than one good idea in my submission, they’ll ask for another $25 per idea they think may make it. It’s up to me to trust them and I do. I’m all for the $25 fee because it forces the inventor to choose his best ideas. But I think it should only be paid once unless Edison Nation contacts you that in their judgement it’s worth resubmission. This will not prevent gold members from resubmission if they believe in their product. Non-gold members would still not have this privilege. Altering this benefit from exclusively gold members would not necessarily reduce the number of gold members if the other benefits are good enough. If not, just the prestige of being a gold member is good enough for most. i just don’t have the money and, I think, Edison Nation is being distracted from their prime focus which is to find successful products.

Ralf,
Your post is a bit off-topic for this thread and I’d hate to see it hijacked but I’ll address it. There are a few points to take into consideration. 1) Different searches are based on different criteria, therefore, an idea that might not be a good fit for one search certainly could be a great fit for the second. 2) We can’t go back in time and foresee what future search criteria will be so at the time we’re looking at a particular idea for one search, we don’t know that it will be a good fit for a certain future search. 3) If we only had 100 ideas to go through, your process would likely work, but as the database grows, that becomes an impossible exercise. By the way, the stage in which your idea was failed should give you a good feel for whether you should consider resubmitting your idea in the future: http://support.edisonnation.com/faqs/live-produ...

Ok, good answer.

but there can’t be that many good ideas to keep track of. I mean that’s how those other invention submission companies make their money. They know that only about 1% of ideas are good and much fewer than that will ever make it to market. Hence, they make their money off the submission process. A great idea is great regardless of the search criteria and should be marked and put aside. You guys have the eye to know what they are; much more so than any inventor who is by nature biased to his own inventions. I doubt you’d need to keep track of more than 10 ideas no matter how large the database grew.

Have to disagree with you there, Ralf. By my count they’ve signed contracts on over 20 different ideas, are probably close to signing a couple more, and have presented maybe 500 or so product ideas to the various companies in the past year. If they present an idea to a company I would wager they believe it is “good” enough to be considered. And that is all just in the first year, before lots of people even knew this site existed.

Ok, good answer.

Matt, may I ask you a question about the ASOTV search? I have two products that I sold in the past. One is a video which I sold on TV through infomercials and on QVC, and the other is a book that sold on QVC and in catalogs. (They are on completely different subjects). I own the copyrights to both the video and the book (not the cover design of the book).Both of these were very successful and I believe with the right marketing, they could both be home runs. The video grossed over $2 million (100,000 were sold) and 20,000 hard copy books were sold. Would it be possible to submit these for a product search or do we need to submit products that have never been sold before?

Ralf, just to throw in my $.02…the quality of the ideas submitted to EN has to be amazing or else BB&B, Spencers, WestPoint Home, Springs Creative, and PetSmart wouldn’t have returned to sponsor more searches!

UH, just got a strange email from Edison Nation thanking me for my payments and submissions to the new ASOTV… problem is, i didn’t make any payments. I just opted in two previous submissions.

Now, as these were in my idea database, I understood that to mean that any future opting in of them was a freebie with the Gold membership.

Could this be some kind of error, since I edited the entries, correcting typos I never noticed before?

I have checked my online card account, and I wasn’t billed.

What gives?

Ralf,
The “invention submission companies” make their money by telling you that you have a great idea and then selling you $8,000-$15,000 of design patent and really bad product design services. They tell you that you have a home run but you just need to pay them that money to get it to the point that they can sell it for you.

Your number of “great” ideas that we’ve had is way off, by the way. We really have way too many very viable ideas to be able to make your process work. Any idea that has made it to a finalist stage could be a home run depending on the particular retail channel.

C Martin,
I’m guessing that we missed an if/then statement in that email receipt where we check to see if you’re a gold member and have submitted a free opt-in. Here’s an easy way to understand it: if you had to put in your credit card info before sending your idea, you submitted it as a new idea and paid for it. If you didn’t put in your credit card info, you submitted it as an opt-in as a gold member. Our support team is looking into it for you.

C Martin,

It looks like there was just a bad choice of wording where we say “We have received payment, and your submission is now in our system.” It looks like were saying that whether or not you were actually charged. I’ve corrected the issue.

Thanks for the head up,
Jared Pace
EN Team

Quik tech question for staff; I edit small changes to wording in a submission, at the end I hit “save and continue” and it promts me that, “This product search has already ended,” Does that mean we can’t edit after a search ends and before a product is presented to sponsors? Or was that another just bad wording? Or am I retarded? ok thanx.

Hello William,

You can edit your submission after the search has closed. I just let the tech team know about the wording and they said they would fix it. Thanks!

Hello ENteam! Could you please take a look at my post above and let me know if it is acceptable to submit products (which I created and own) that have already been tested successfully and sold in the past through a different DRTV company? These products are not currently being sold anywhere, but have a proven track record. They are still timely. (Perhaps more now than ever). I have a tendency to create products that are slightly ahead of their time.

Jaclyn,

You may submit products to Live Product Searches that you previously sold. However, please note that if a search sponsor selects your product, you automatically assign the rights to your product to Edison Nation, and the search sponsor has the exclusive right to use your product for the duration of the contract.

Hi ENTEAM,
My idea went from patent pending to patented. Do I need to edit this in on my current submission, or does the staff do there own research and updates if a company becomes interested? Keep in mind it takes about a month to get assigned a patent number. I’m thinking the submission will require a patent number.
Thanks everyone for all your hard work.

I forgot about the support site: http://support.edisonnation.com/
I’ll ask my question their.

Sounds interesting and really cool. I have a bunch of questions.

1) I understand if you can’t answer this, but with all the resources you’ll be putting behind finalists in the future, will the search itself be more selective in choosing those finalists?

2) Will finalists be more involved in this process, sort of like G8-lite? (G7.5?)

3) If an idea isn’t selected to be a finalist, and assuming the idea isn’t updated by the inventor, is there any point in resubmitting to a later quarterly ASOTV search? This partially relates to my next question, which is:

4) Are these ideas still presented to outside companies, or is Edison Nation (or Enventys or whatever) its own client for these?

Todd,
Congrats on the patent! Very exciting :-) You should make note of that in your idea database. However, note that you will need to enter your patent number when you do so. It might let you enter something like “waiting for assignment” but I’m not sure. Give it a shot and find out :-)

Josh,
1) What I was calling “finalists” will actually be G8s. Thanks for catching that!

2) Yes. If your idea is selected to be tested, we’ll be in touch with you. You won’t be directing the spot, but we’ll definitely be in touch ;-)

3) I think that depends on how far along it got. If it makes it to G7 then there’s a chance something may change along the way – such as a new partner coming to the table.

4) We have continued to align ourselves with the absolute best and brightest in the DR industry. Expect more of that to come. I anticipate that we’ll be bringing in more and more partners as we go – although we’re very selective since there are so many to avoid in that industry.

Just want to say THANK YOU to EN for your continual innovation, particularly on the current LPS front! This search is so unique, what a great idea!!

Quick question, when you say all of the finalists, are you referring to everyone who hits G7 in this search?

This is so exciting!
Thanks again.

Hello, just to clarify, when Matt said “finalists” he meant G8s.

Everyone with a G8-Success will have their ideas tested on the new cutting-edge platform that we’ve created!

ASOTV = G 9 success ?

Hello, just had a quick question.

Does this apply to all the G7s from the last ASOTV search or is that from this new search on?

I ask because I currently have 2 G7s in the last ASOTV search and was wondering what will happen if either of those hits G8. Will I get an advance or will my product have to go through the new “testing platform” for another 4-5-6-7 months??

Like John just said, if my product gets to G8 and says Success with a big green exclamation point I haven’t actually won anything yet right?

So success is actually G9

It would be excellent to have our product achieve national exposure in the testing process. But this raises an interesting question. Will all of the products on the testing platform have patent protection? I’m not talking Provisional form……

I ask this because after publicly disclosing our innovation will the clock start ticking for us to protect it ourselves. Especially if it fails and is returned??

For the previous ASOTV search, we are still presenting to ASOTV partners and we will contact you if there is an interest in your invention.

For the first official ASOTV search under this new program (http://www.edisonnation.com/live_product_search...) if you reach G8 I would call it a level of success because your idea will tested and will run on television networks throughout the USA. We will be investing the money needed to create the infomercial, execute whatever product development is needed, and pay for the television advertising.

Based on the resulting metrics of these media tests, products will be selected to take to market. Each product selected will be awarded the $2,500 advance and we will launch a full-blown DRTV campaign for your product nationwide.

From Matt Spangard
“Todd,
Congrats on the patent! Very exciting :-) You should make note of that in your idea database. However, note that you will need to enter your patent number when you do so. It might let you enter something like “waiting for assignment” but I’m not sure. Give it a shot and find out :-)”

Matt, thank you very much.

“waiting for assignment” worked great for the “patent number” in the database. I"ll add the new number when I get it.

I went ahead and replaced the answers with n/a with real answers, incase this is like a job application (no n/a).

Hi Matt, are the categories listed as the most successful DRTV products on the new ASOTV just suggestions or are we limited to those only. Is this new search wide open for ideas as long as they meet some of the key questions to consider that are listed below the most successful categories. Thanks very much.

Robert,

Yes the ASOTV search is wide open. The list of most successful DRTV product categories is a guideline; if you have a great idea that is outside of the given categories you may submit it.

So, what is the benefit of this search vs. others?

Essentially, how I’m reading it is that the benefit of obtaining G8 status in this search is the fact that you will be doing media tests and metrics to determine whether it will be a hit or not. Is that accurate?

Isn’t everything else essentially the same? i.e. Don’t you patent, develop, brand, manufacture, etc. the products that reach G8 level already or, is that something the search sponsor does?

I am also curious re: John’s post:

“It would be excellent to have our product achieve national exposure in the testing process. But this raises an interesting question. Will all of the products on the testing platform have patent protection? I’m not talking Provisional form……

I ask this because after publicly disclosing our innovation will the clock start ticking for us to protect it ourselves. Especially if it fails and is returned??"

Do you still patent these ideas?

And the G8/G9 is an interesting point. Sounds like the up front payment is the same but Is there a different contract for this search vs. the others?

Thanks Marla and Matt!
b

Hello,

Our agreement has been updated to reflect this testing process. A copy of the Innovator Agreement is available to view and download on the following page: http://www.edisonnation.com/lps/faq

The benefit of this program is we will be investing a lot of dollars into testing your product. If an idea meets the target metrics in testing, it’s likely to be a success and we can put a ton of resources behind it very quickly through our network of DRTV partners. We will continue to host our traditional Live Product Searches with major retailers and manufactures, this program is just an additional opportunity for the DRTV route.

I will check with our patent council on your patent concerns and I should have an answer for you tomorrow.

Thanks : )

Thank You Marla. I personally think this is an excellent opportunity and and exciting new chapter in the growth of EN. Please don’t interpret my question on PPA vs Utility as being ungrateful. I just need clarification so I can plan/budget accordingly regardless of the testing outcome.

I’m trying to figure out what the repercussions if any there could be from media testing. In particular from (revealing my innovation in public). Of coarse this is irrelevant if the product is brought to market by EN. But I assume some of the G8’s tested will be returned to the inventor.

Obviously the media testing has many positive benefits to the inventor as well such as further product development and valuable feedback etc….etc..

Thanks for looking into this. Let us know what the legal department has to say.

Keep up the good work.
Thanks John.

My two cents…. If the product is not at least in “patent-pending” non-provisional stage when submitted for EN consideration… it is essentially impossible to secure patent protection before launching in a timely manner, since the patent process usally takes an average of 20 months (or more with the current backlog at the USPTO). I beleive that a DRTV launch would DEFINITELY start the 12 month clock ticking on filing a non-provisional application after public disclosure/exposure. The other side is products are launched all the time while in “patent-pending” status or even no patent filed at all. Inany regard, we will await EN patent counsel.

Hello John,

Regarding patents, we will evaluate each selected product on a case by case bases to determine whether or not patent protection is needed. If patent protection is needed we will cover to fees. A member of the Edison Nation team will be in contact with each inventor prior to testing to discus the details.

I hope everyone has a fabulous Friday!