Nathan Waters

As you may have noted in my last post, I briefly mentioned that an idea I’m working on to hopefully help me out with uni costs this year while I get a few ‘real’ (i.e. those that don’t involve a complete site dedicated to selling ad space) ideas going, with partner Tristan.

Well I was originally thinking of creating a static site and manually adding ‘pixels’ etc, but I thought “hell there must be one of the MDHP scripts out there for free”. Well there is: Rent A Patch.

I downloaded the script, installed it and wow! This thing has an admin backend, an automatic upload and co-ordinate position manager for buyers and also complete and automated PayPal for buyers. Although one thing it doesn’t have which I would have liked is the ability for buyers to login and change their pic, details, link etc.

So at this stage what I plan to do is use bits and pieces from this script to build my idea (which for the cynics out there, is not a MDHP copy-cat). Although, again I have little to no PHP skills, but hopefully it should be alright, if not I can always resort back to the manual idea which should still be alright. My goal now is to get this completed in the next 7 days, then have about 2 weeks to promote it and hopefully attract some buyers. For the first month of launch I’ll be offering a special discount (possibly even sell space for free)… so keep an eye on any updates!

EDIT: Well I’ve been having a couple of solid hours tinkering around in the code, and with my knowledge of PHP… it aint gonna happen!

The modifications would be very simple if I had a basic understanding. So I think what I’ll do is go back to static pages and manual work, although just shove a small uploader in there, and maybe test out a little bit of the PayPal integration. Then if I get a few sales I can hit rentacoder.com again and get someone to make it all automatic. Then if even more sales come I can again find a coder (hopefully someone at uni) to add these additional features I have in mind.

I was briefly running through some numbers in my head and if I can make only 2 sales a week, then I will basically cover my uni accommodation. If Tristan decides/wants to put in half the work at a later date, then only 4 sales will be needed a week. If we managed to have 6 sales a week (i.e. basically 1 per day), then that would cover my on-campus rent, plus give me an extra $86 spending/savings/reinvestment money per week… which ultimately would allow myself to focus spare time on business projects and not have to work part-time for peanuts.

Nathan Waters
Taking pixels to the next level