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Posts Tagged ‘influence’

  • Tue, Jun 8 2010

    Rate Ideas, Earn Influence!

    By jess at 6:39 pm

    You know those rating scales next to each idea submission?

    Yeah, those ones.

    It’s about time you gave these little red buttons some major attention. Starting last round, community members are able to earn a small amount of influence by rating ideas. The more you rate, the more you earn! But please, do the ideators a favor and put some thought into your ratings, kay? They take your feedback very seriously.

    Coming up next… comment influence! Stay tuned for an announcement.

    • 6 Comments
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  • Fri, Jun 4 2010

    Petal Drops Influencers

    By shirley at 3:40 pm

    Great news! Petal Drops is getting ready to launch soon. Although the packaging does not have room to list all of the influencers, we want to thank everyone for the abundance of great ideas which made this product possible!

    Pieter Laga,39.94; kelly saglibene,7.55; david einar,7.08; Bill Burton,5.23; Jenny savariego,1.15; Mindy Kaufman,1.10; josh Spear,0.89; Dan Matarazzo,0.79; Kathleen Lydon,0.79; Catherine Burnett,0.77; quirkyjeff,0.65; Michael Cavada,0.64; Jenny Heil,0.63; Ryan Quarles,0.61; Brian Bouwman,0.60; Chris Tutor,0.60; Matthew Poprocki,0.60; Matthew Toghill,0.58; Micah Goodman,0.58; Ezra Glenn,0.57; Susan Childress,0.55; Ezra Karger,0.55; daniel horton,0.55; HSIN-YI CHOU,0.55; Jeff Jarosch,0.55; L. Downing,0.55; Erik Cohen,0.55; Elad Meshulami,0.55; michael harris,0.55; Mark Howson,0.50; Arezou Beirami,0.50; Christi Helsel,0.50; ethan,0.50; Rees Maxwell,0.50; Darya Gol,0.50; Hamed Nilforoshan,0.50; Spencer Battle,0.50; Michael Manning,0.50; Bruce Bussing,0.49; Scott Galloway,0.49; Renny Fong,0.49; yael miller,0.47; Benjamin Sheung,0.47; regina gelfo,0.46; Jared Fiorovich,0.46; Laurie Fox,0.46; Sandra Lehr,0.43; Delphine Dumon,0.35; Judi Sigler,0.32; Lee Novich,0.28; Paul Natland,0.24; olivier sepulchre,0.23; Wivine Packeu,0.23; David Parker,0.23; mitch lowe,0.19; Ruth Mortensen,0.16; Yvonne Smith,0.14; Margaret Ashenden,0.14; heather bryant,0.14; Sumit Bohra,0.14; Stephen Johnson,0.13; bruce gilardi,0.12; David Isaacson,0.12; sandra gonzalez-toritto,0.12; joshua meyer,0.12; Stacy McDade,0.12; Patricia Earnshaw,0.12; Scott Kehoe,0.12; Tina Peterson,0.12; Chris Jones,0.12; Andrew Troutt,0.12; Holly Bee,0.10; Simon Novich,0.09; Joseph Antolick,0.09; Cody Whitby,0.09; Helena Martin,0.09; Christine Helfrich,0.09; Novich Simon,0.09; Ben Kaufman,0.09; Da M,0.09; John Lambros,0.09; Kristin Ross,0.09; David Kay,0.09; Liz McKay,0.09; Gabriele Mongardi,0.09; Jamie Thomas,0.09; James Gooden,0.09; Simon Novich,0.09; D M,0.09; Michael Mick,0.09; Lisa Zunich,0.09; Robert Park,0.09; StatusQuirk,0.09; Wade Filewich,0.09; Chris Bohlin,0.09; Vicente Di Cunto,0.09; YAO-TING MAO,0.09; Stephen Stewart,0.09; Rachelle Uy,0.09; Clare,0.09; Brendan Donovan,0.09; Florian Hoeper,0.09; Ian Patrick Co,0.09; Carson Kulp,0.08; Aviva Gutin,0.08; Mark Ramos,0.07; David Walczyk,0.07; Liz Carlin-Smith,0.07; Melissa Havens,0.07; Lucille Berry,0.07; Melinda Battle,0.07; Jimmy Bint,0.07; Luk Van Geldre,0.07; millie sloan,0.07; Michael Mueller,0.07; Paul Maré,0.06; Garrett Gourley,0.06; Jennifer Willis,0.06; dond,0.06; nicolas abdallah,0.06; Terry Long,0.06; Liz Studlick,0.06; Kelli Kent,0.05; Martin Gertsen,0.05; Hannah Williams,0.05; Stephen Tan,0.05; Radek Pall,0.05; Graham Rosendorff,0.05; Rafael Soto,0.05; Bill Andrews,0.05; Patrick Dersjant,0.05; Euan Walker,0.05; madnis 5150,0.05; jake ruesink,0.05; Ant Vance,0.05; Katie Cordrey,0.05; matej pelicon,0.05; zhandra tam,0.05; Ivan Chong,0.05; Adam Rosendorff,0.05; James Canning,0.05; Charlene Cunningham,0.05; Steve Levine,0.05; Melinda Himel,0.05; Homer Trecartin,0.05; matthew restucci,0.05; fernando smith,0.05; Jason Moore,0.05; David Roberts,0.05; Joann Burton,0.05; jimmy banaszewski,0.05; Nik Eastburn,0.05; Spencer Daly,0.05; Leslie Darhansoff,0.05; Jennifer Ammons,0.05; Myrna Harris,0.05; Brian Grays,0.03; David Beegle,0.03; Jonathan Rumore,0.03; Jason Kidd,0.03; James Lee,0.03; Michael Ward,0.03; B Durfee,0.03; Sierra Head,0.03; Shawnee Cook,0.03; William Tylko,0.03; Hannah Cherry,0.03; Vincent Cheng,0.03; Mandy Bowen,0.03; Davis Farris,0.03; JJ Gertler,0.03; Ari Salomon,0.03; Alex de Beer,0.03; Carolyn Thompson,0.03; Anna Lin,0.03; Nathaniel Merriman,0.03; Jene Hullett,0.03; Bobby Heuser,0.03; kristyn woodland,0.03; eric ransom,0.03; Hil Omernik,0.03; Duylam Nguyen-Ngo,0.03; Dave Wood,0.03; Nilson Pascoal,0.03; Samuel,0.03; Craig Rich,0.03; RSpencer,0.03; Ryan Meashaw,0.03; Gareth Browne,0.03; Samuel S,0.03; Brian Curley,0.03; Emanuele Fantin,0.03; Scott Shay,0.03; Daryoush Derakshandeh,0.03; Farès Fayad,0.03; Ruth Murray,0.03; Davis Foster,0.03; Patrick Hiller,0.03; Alison Buhler,0.03; david skora,0.03; Daniel Gary,0.03; Michael Mattox,0.03; Lorie Shaull,0.03; Kaari Jae,0.03; Marjorie Sarnat,0.03; Ruthie Arbeiter,0.03; Roy F,0.03; Matteo Bersan,0.03; dean elazab,0.03; Alex Salkin,0.03; Christopher Chiou,0.03; Sam Cowan,0.03; TroyTess,0.03; Nathan Burkhardt,0.03; karry constable,0.03; Christine Hendrickson,0.03; Eric Richie,0.03; Halldór Nilsson,0.03; David Kirk,0.03; Andrew Scott,0.03; Jennifer Soucy,0.03; Stephen Bozzone,0.03; Matthew Taverni,0.03; Christopher Tom Wong,0.03; Mark Barbolak,0.03; Stalias,0.03; Alison Holbach,0.03; Michael McCoy,0.03; Matthew Bellas,0.03; Joao Mesquita,0.03; Aaron,0.03; Marc Barrer,0.03; graycloud rios,0.03; Graham Lee,0.03; Natalia Rakowski,0.03; Levi Breederland,0.03; Jason D,0.03; Steve Goldberg,0.03; Peter Rust,0.03; James Clevenger,0.03; Matt Kopecki,0.03; Carly Perez,0.03; Toren Shahar,0.03; Ed Abrams,0.03; Ian-Sebastien Sweeney,0.03; Thomas Morgan,0.03; Kristen Shamis,0.03; PattiD,0.03; Sam Mathews,0.03; Sergio Rodrigues,0.03; Daniel DeLong,0.03; Robin Carra,0.03; Kathleen Gannon,0.03; Franziska Luh,0.03; Thane Gill,0.03; Blaine Warkentine,0.03; Roger Tobiasz,0.02; T P,0.02; William Potash,0.02; Wendy Pesce,0.02; Rohan Likhite,0.02; Kim Li`,0.02; Jeanne Jones,0.02; Carol Mangis,0.02; Rand Howard,0.02; Sofia Baptista,0.02; luke schulze,0.02; Chunwan Tseng,0.02; Liyang Ding,0.02; Mark Maggi,0.02; Tyron Haberland,0.02; hari patnaik,0.02; LIEN CHAU,0.02; AARON MCCREA,0.02; Rauno Villberg,0.02; micah spear,0.02; Nate Rumore,0.02; Susan Davis,0.02; Todd Davies,0.02; Anita Stevens,0.02; Fung Chi,0.02; Heather Shaughnessy,0.02; steven mccarthy,0.02; Cody,0.02; Jake Cohen,0.02; jason port,0.02; Wan Tseng,0.02; Tal Sharon,0.02; Bethany Bobo,0.02; Aushvill Damonte,0.02; Jean Starling,0.02; Micheal Abbott,0.02; Ashley Rhinehart,0.02; Lundin Cahill,0.02; Brandon Abbott,0.02; Bill Kobs,0.02; April Davis,0.02; Voravut Ratanakommon,0.02; Stephen Poprocki,0.02; Amber OKeefe,0.02; wing li,0.02; Malice Grant,0.02; Annette Sosic,0.02; Carol Flinn,0.02; Amanda Peters,0.02; marilyn tirpak,0.02; Jill Sharon,0.02; Jessica Ngo,0.02; Jill Israel,0.02; Maryeileen Corcoran,0.02; Cynthia Zeh,0.02; April Rollins,0.02; benny ou,0.02; stephanie Burns,0.02; Harmony Dashut,0.02; maren gandy,0.02; Dave Nowak,0.02; Beverly Gary,0.02; Michiko Charley,0.02; Krisann Gentry,0.02.

    • No Comments
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  • Thu, Jun 3 2010

    5 Productivity Blockers And How To Avoid ‘Em

    By danielle at 2:20 pm

    Hello Quirks!

    After celebrating a fabulous birthday yesterday, we’re ready to move full-speed through another great year. And you know what that means… self-improvement time! Oh yeah, we’re excited too.

    Here at the office we thrive off of your ideas. They make us laugh, make us cry (not usually though) and speak to the true innovation of the future. But no matter how moving they may be, it’s not until you send it into our Quirky world that the real magic happens. This magic, my friends, is what we call collaboration. Collaboration is the power behind our social product development. Unfortunately, there are some actions and attitudes that have the power to stop this wonderful process in its tracks.

    These are called “productivity blockers.” Studies have found that during most ideation sessions, many good (even great) ideas are lost, forgotten, and thrown to the wayside. I know what you’re thinking; Quirky ain’t no boardroom. Good point… but we can also fall into this dreaded trap if we’re not careful.

    Dilbert Brainstorming

    Keep yourself, and our community, safe by making sure to never (ever) commit these five PB sins:

    1) Thou shall not get distracted. Why? When you want to get an idea out and developed, and do it in an original way, it’s important to focus!

    2) Thou shall not repeat inspiration. Creative sparks are one of a kind, so don’t think that going back to that same person/place/thing that inspired you last time is going to help you give birth to your next great idea too. Branch out, explore some (insert noun here) new!

    3) Thou shall not second-guess. Say it with us: you are a creative person with worthy ideas. Please share all of them, no matter how weird they may be!

    4) Thou shall not rush. We value quality, even over efficiency. Don’t let the pressure dull your innovative thinking, okay? Stop, read submissions and comments from others, and make sure you really think before posting.

    5) Thou shall not put thy eggs into one basket. Make sure spread your creative juices across multiple idea developments. Creativity is muscle to be whipped into shape.

    By steering clear of these traps, you can also avoid the second creative-killer, “topic fixation”… but more on that later.

    Get out and get down with your creative self. Influence away!

    • 6 Comments
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  • Tue, May 4 2010

    Influence, Demystified

    By jess at 1:33 pm

    We’ve been working with our graphic designers to come up with a little something that we hope will more clearly map out the various opportunities for earning influence on Quirky.

    Here’s what we’ve come up with:

    What do you think? Constructive feedback appreciated!

    • 3 Comments
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  • Wed, Mar 17 2010

    If You Can Dodge A Wrench, You Can Dodge A Ball

    By mike at 10:33 am

    Payments, I know. Everyone has been asking about payments. Even my dodgeball team. I had to skip the playoffs tonight to work on payments. Tragic, isn’t it. I mean, really, think about it. How often do you get to spend an hour of your night throwing things at other people for fun? And compete it at?! Seriously. Dodgeball is the catharsis for a New York soul.

     

    But I digress…

    Here’s the scoop on payments.

    • Houston, we are go for liftoff! – I’ve ran the tests several times now and the numbers are all adding up as expected. Efficiencies have been found and tuned. Backups and replication are in place. In fact, I’m so nerdy about this that I’ve  mapped out the number of seconds that we expect it all to take, broken down by each step. Let’s light this candle.
    • About that launch – along with the new payment system, we will be launching some other new stuff which includes Facebook Connect for Quirky. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for you all to share what you’re doing on Quirky through Facebook. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing and all.
    • T-minus … –  I’d like to get this puppy into orbit sometime tomorrow night. I’ll be working with Chris and Gui tomorrow to apply the finishing touches. If all goes well, we’ll bring the site down for a couple hours and let ‘er rip. We’ll drop a tweet when we’re ready to go.

    So, with that said, when we do launch, the product earnings you’ll see in your account will be accurate and up to date. And from then on, they will only increase.

    Welcome to Quirky ;)


    • 10 Comments
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  • Fri, Mar 12 2010

    Update On Payments System

    By mike at 4:18 pm

    Hi all. I love the feedback here. You all are awesome. Whenever I get a chance to get lost in the products and ideas you’re dreaming up, I’m truly inspired. It’s like a volcano of creativity. Thanks for making this Quirky experiment such a success.

    Now, payments. I’ve been mum about them for some time and wanted to give you an update. Much has happened in the past few weeks so I’ll stick with the major points.

    1.) We upgraded our database infrastructure to increase site reliability and speed. With the amount of payments to be processed everyday, this system needs be finely tuned, purring like a kitten.

    2.) We are recalculating presales influence for all products and will reward it only to those people who have completed their orders. There was a bug that rewarded influence to people who never completed their presale order. This will fix that.

    3.) We are recalculating payments for all products. There was a number rounding error in the previous rewards algorithm that failed to reward people for fractions of cents. This is now patched up. most people should see an increase in their account balance, if only by a few cents.

    4.) Payments will be processed daily. If your earnings per product are more than a penny, it will be added to your account balance.

    5.) You’ll have a page to view your earnings by product as well as all of your other account transactions.

    The code is done and nearly ready to go. I’m preparing our staging environment (literally) now for one final round of testing. When all goes well, the next step will be to bring it live. This will require bringing the site down for a few hours to migrate the data and bring the new system online. We’ll blog about it before we pull the trigger.

    Any questions, concerns, conundrums, complaints or compliments… please, let us know. We’re listening.

    Much love, 
    -m

    • No Comments
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  • Fri, Feb 26 2010

    Pulse On The Community

    By jess at 6:18 pm

    To regroup after the craziness of the move, we held our first Community Pulse meeting in our new model shop (pictured above) to discuss all things related to YOU, our wacky, quirky, infinitely loyal community. This weekly meeting is just one of many ways we’re working to improve the Quirky experience.

    Here are just a few of the many, many things we discussed:

    - Creating a central dashboard so that when you log onto our system, you can immediately view new activity on the site, receive notifications, track the projects you’re influencing, be alerted to follow-up comments on forum threads you’ve posted, etc.

    - Demystifying our influence engine by creating a number of graphics that clearly illustrate various influence earning scenarios.

    - Improving our idea submission process in such a way that makes it easier to peruse and compare submissions. This will be important as the number of submissions per week continues to grow.

    - Recognizing active Quirks with a badge/reward system, and rewarding those who have been particularly successful with social sales. We now have a “User of the Week,” who receives a free product idea submission and recognition in the weekly newsletter, but we want to do more!

    - SWAG! By popular demand, we are working with our branding folks to come up with a super slick line of Quirky products, which will hopefully go up for sale in the Quirky store soon.

    These changes, and the others we discussed, will take some time to implement, but we’re working hard to get the ball rolling now. Please continue to let us know what you think about these and other ideas and improvements. If you couldn’t tell by now, we value your opinions!

    • 4 Comments
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  • Fri, Feb 26 2010

    New Terms Starting Monday, March 1

    By nikki at 2:11 pm



    Hi all,

    We wanted to remind you that Monday is March 1, which means our new terms and conditions will take effect. You might remember that Ben blogged about this here, but we figured we’d give you a recap below.

    For all product ideas that are submitted on or after March 1st, 2010, the 30/10 product rewards will take effect. In other words, for Product 36 and onward, we will reward 30% to all influencers for direct sales on quirky.com, and 10% to all influencers for indirect sales (wholesale/distribution).

    Remember, we are doing this to allow us to invest heavily and confidently in the expansion of all of quirky’s products into channel(s) which should allow for a LARGE increase in overall sales and overall reward distribution.

    As we explained previously, changing the product reward % is something we don’t want to have to do, but it has become apparent that if we want these products to reach their full potential, we need to invest heavily in opening up a full scale sales department, retail/wholesale distribution partnerships around the world, etc. All of this will be done at the company’s expense.

    That said, once we’ve built the machine, we need to make sure it’s sustainable. Specifically, we need to make sure that the actual sale of each individual unit is profitable– otherwise we won’t be around very long.

    Let’s walk through the mechanics of a hypothetical Retail/Wholesale Deal:

    :: Assume an accessory type Widget with a retail price of $20.

    :: With the way we are pricing items, it’s safe to assume a product with this retail price will cost us roughly $5.50 to source, manufacture, QA , package & ship.

    :: An average retailer looks for at LEAST a 50% margin on accessory type items. (this means we would have to sell to them at around 10 dollars)

    :: We would likely have to pay a Sales Rep anywhere from 5-10% to complete/manage the sales relationship (lets just say 7%, so $0.70 on this transaction)

    :: Once the retailer pays us, (and that could take a while) quirky will take in roughly $9.30.

    :: Off of that $9.30, as it stands we would pay 30% out to the community ($2.79)

    :: The “profit” received by quirky for the sale of this $10 item would be: $9.30(net receipts) – $7.29 (Community Expense + Cost of goods)  = $1.01

    :: That leaves us with about a dollar on each unit to pay the quirky staff, run the website, warehouse all of the goods, carry / purchase inventory, market the product, etc.

    While we would love to be able to do this, it’s just not possible. We need to build a model that will allow us to provide this service to you for decades to come AND make every product successful/profitable for both the business & our influencers.

    We feel strongly that this change will work out for everyone’s benefit, and we are confident that we won’t have to make a change like this again for quite some time. As always, hit up our Community Ambassadors at questions@quirky.com if you have any questions or concerns. We’re always listening!

    • 6 Comments
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  • Wed, Feb 17 2010

    Cash Money, Son – Part II

    By mike at 11:41 am

    Hello my quirkies, a quick update on payments. I appreciate your patience.

    1. We’re working with a kickass database team to ensure that our systems are rock solid and capable of handling the number of payments that we are expecting to process every day… which is many.

    2. Gui has been diligently digging through the code and updating the influence and payment algorithms to accommodate our new changes. Trust me, it’s a lot to comprehend in your first two weeks. My hat’s off to him.

    3. Today (Wednesday) I’m going to plan out the migration with Gui and our database guys to make sure that we have our bases covered and a schedule for doing it.

    4. We’re going to test everything on our staging environment first. We want to make sure we get this right. I’ll be pulling data to that server today and prepping it for test runs.

    As you can (hopefully) see, we’re close. By the end of the day, I should have a pretty good sense of where we stand. We’ve done the hard part (which is understanding this beast) and now we’re focused on applying the finishing touches to Frankenstein.

    So with testing starting on Thursday, I’m looking at next week to launch this sucker and get you all PAID! Once we spark this thing to life, its gonna churn out payments to thousands of users every day for years to come. Boooya!

    In the meantime, if you find yourself in need of some brain candy to tide you over, dip your hand into this virtual cookie jar of ideas and sample at will. This stuff is way more exciting than getting paid anyways.

    JK :)

    With love,
    your chief logic bomber

    P.S. They have wifi in court…

    • 1 Comment
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  • Wed, Feb 3 2010

    Cash Money, Son

    By mike at 9:38 pm

    As some of our more abstute quirkies have noticed, influence payments have been suspended since the site redesign launched last week.  I could go into all the reasons why this is so, but this being the internet and all, I figure I only have about 3 seconds of your attention left to spill the beans. So in summary, though a time machine would have benefitted us greatly, we found ourselves lacking and did the best we could by building you a brand-spanking sexy new website. In real time.

    Now, i know what (some of) you are thinking … or at least twittering about.  I think Henry Hill in Goodfellas says it best …  ”F**k you.  Pay me.”

    And to that … touché.  Signal received.  Loud and clear.

    Here’s the deal:

    One. We are tracking your influence and orders everyday.  Though payments have temporarily stopped, collecting the data that drives them has not.  You will be paid what you are owed.

    Two. We need to recalculate influence across all products and projects to ensure that we have an accurate accounting.  Some users have left the site.  Others have failed to complete their presales commitments.  And since we can only make payments to users when orders ship, our influence and payment algorithm needs to take that into account. Long story short, when we do turn payments back on, you will, if anything, have more influence than you did before.  The only case where you would lose influence is if you didn’t complete a presale order, or someone you referred didn’t.  We’re basically redistributing influence that other users have given up.

    Three. We’re building you a new account page for tracking your payments.  Instead of the register we have now that just lists all of your transactions, you will have a summary of how much you are making per product per day.  It will be much more concise and coherent than what we have now.  I personally thank you for putting up with it this long.  I know it’s a mess.

    Four. This shit takes time, yo!  For real though, we want to get this right and we’ve got 30 some odd products to do it for.  So now that we have a beautiful website to showcase all of your quirky creations, we can (and are) focusing heavily on closing the loop and rewarding you for your efforts … and accurately.

    So… as I often tell Ben when he asks me when we’re going to launch something new, I now offer the same words to you …

    We will launch it just as soon as it is ready.

    That said, we’re still testing it this week and I’m outta town next week (*cough*, going to TED, *ahem*).  So, realistically, I’m thinking like two weeks from now.  I’ve got jury duty on the 16th so that might be a perfect day, ya.

    They’ve got WiFi in court, right?

    –

    If at any time you want an estimate on what your account balance is, just drop a community ambassador a line and they will be happy to help.

    • 6 Comments
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