I DON’T ask myself can I do it better? I ask HOW can I do it better? Guess what….

Martin • 30th Apr 2011 • Musings • Case studies, impossible, plugins, wordpress plugins

…. I some how find a way to succeed or to achieve my goals. This can do or see how “5 + 5 + 5 = 550″ attitude has made my job postings on sites like elance and odesk receive less bids. The bids I receive, (and am happy) are from those developers who believe that what the mind can conceive the body can do. The others tend to have a hard time with my descriptions and my vision and eventually they either :

1. Run (never reply my mails )
2. Tell me it is impossible.

And the fun is at the end of the day I find someone who not only tells me its possible but who goes ahead and develops the idea. They tend to love the idea of going beyond boundaries that most often than not they tend to take the idea and make it theirs. ( by this I dont mean stealing or copying, I mean working their heads off to make it be the best thing they ever did)

Take for example the following case studies ( mine )

Case study 1 : make money on fiverr

Fiverr came out sometime last year and it was all the rage. It garnered lots of press attentions and it seemed like a game changer for outsourcing minute tasks for a fixed price of 5$.
Many people got pissed off as this often meant that jobs which cost considerably more were been forced to be priced at a fiverr. Human as we are, we most often will like to pay less for something worth far more and hence fiverr kept on growing day by day as long as there were people willing to provide quality for less value.
The problem now came the question, “How do I provide a quality service or product for only $5 ? Which will normally take time to deliver and hence cost more” To solve this question, this usually meant you will have to spend less time providing this service hence resulting in a lower quality product been provided. ( note this held true for services offered and not products ie services in which all you do will be to send the download link to the paying customer). So I came up with MY own solution to this question.

The idea ?

But what if you could automate the whole process? What if you could provide your service faster than you would normally have done? Thereby processing 5+ orders in the same time you would have done only 1 previously. ( note: this idea was sold, hence I can’t go into the exact details as to what it was, but it’s underlying principles were to do more in less time that you would normally have)
So as always, I carried my idea to the experts ( odesk,elance)

The developers response

Below are examples of the type of replies I got from a dozen of developers I interviewed from odesk and elance in regards to my idea :

1. This can’t be done. ( flat NO)
2. It will require lots of research and we don’t think it can be implemented ( Complex, way to say sorry I don’t know how to do this, but I don’t want to say it straightforward )
3. We don’t think the websites in question can be modified to execute your idea. ( refusal to try)

Then…..

…..after searching and interviewing lots of candidates who usually opted for a NO or not replying my mails I stumbled upon a young developer with no experience or hours billed but who assured me he could do this ( can do attitude ). He not only understood what I wanted he took it upon himself to LEARN my requirements and together we brainstormed on this application.

Results

Two weeks later (something which most developers had forecasted 1-3months ) my new found developer had delivered to me a working application.
I was eager to test out my idea on Fiverr and as expected it worked and the money I spent developing this application paid for itself over and over again.
And today this developer/friend is an integral part of every technical thing I do.

Case study 2(shorter i promise) : wordpress plugin

Once more I have come up with one of those ideas and this time it falls in the wordpress plugins folder. As usual I’ve gone through the ” that can’t work stage” and I have found another developer with the “can do” attitude to help build this for me. I already like him so far and I am looking towards integrating him to the team. Unlike the other ideas I’ve had of which they were products or offered paid services, this one will be FREE hence the only measure of success this will have will be “How many people are actually using it?”

For this we’ll have to wait and see until I release it. But don’t forget

“It is only when you think you can achieve, that you will actually achieve”

So tell me, when have you been faced with the “it can’t be done reply” when you talked to someone about your ideas and what were the results? I will love to know what you did so please tell me.

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