How to make passive income in royalties with your idea
By: Hustle Domain
Tags: Financial Freedom, Make Money Online, Side Hustle, Passive Income, How To Make Money Online

Don’t sit on your dreams. Turn them into reality.

Has it ever happened to you where you are just sitting there minding your own business and all of a sudden an idea pops up in your head. Not just any idea, but that one idea that you know you must share with someone. An idea that could be a game changer. An idea that could potentially be monetized. So you have an invention idea, but now what? You sit there for awhile and think further. Your mind races as you explore the finer details in your head. You may even grab a pen or a pencil to start jotting down notes or start drawing the invention or workflow for this idea. The more you dig deeper the more credible this idea appears to be. Naturally the more excited you get. You do your research to confirm the originality of your idea and are thrilled to find that there is no existing product or service that is the same as your idea OR that your idea is a marked improvement on something existing.

You are all riled up and it’s at this point when the reality sinks in. You don’t have the skills or the resources to turn your idea into a reality. This thought is deflating and one that we’ve experienced ourselves, many times. Thankfully though, we have come to learn that now there is a way to bring an awesome idea to life. You can submit your invention idea for royalties and in fact there’s more than just one way to do it. In this post we will explore several services where you can partner up with companies to help turn your idea into a reality. So let’s dive right into some of these companies and what they have to offer.

Quirky

First up is the New York based company called Quirky. As per their own website description it’s “a free community-led invention platform that brings real people’s ideas to life. Quirky makes inventing and selling products possible by pairing inventors with product designers and big manufacturing companies that can bring their ideas to life. Quirky is essentially the middle man between manufacturers who need innovative product ideas, and individuals with great ideas”.

Once you submit your idea and it gets selected for production, you receive 1.5% royalty on the wholesale price of your product. If the price is set at 20$ per piece and your product sells 100K units, you will earn 30,000$ at 0.30 cents/piece. Royalty payments are paid out quarterly i.e. 4x per year.

New Soda

Next on the list is this Anglo-American based Design Company located in a historic market town west of London, with sales and customer service offices in New Jersey. New Soda focuses on ideas that revolve around the kitchen and gadgets found around there.

As per their website, ideas are submitted online where you can send the details, pictures or even a video link of the product or its prototype. Ideas are reviewed which can take up to 4 weeks. If we like the idea is deemed production worthy, new soda will contact you with details of how to proceed further and may ask you to look at what is called a ‘Royalty Agreement’ which lists details of your possible Royalty payments based on sales, and also lists details like exclusivity and responsibilities. Once the agreement has been agreed by both parties and signed, New Soda will proceed with the necessary steps to get the product prototyped and manufactured.

Fast Cap

Just like New Soda focuses on kitchen gadgets and the like, Fast Cap also focuses on the niche of cabinet making and woodworking. If you have any ideas that are related to the aforementioned trades, you can expect to receive between 2–5% in royalties from Fast cap. This percentage is based on the sale price the product sells for with the distributor, not what the product sells for by the distributor to the market. The royalties are paid out monthly and make for a lucrative side hustle.

Invention City

The next place to submit your ideas is Invention City. Platform operates a little differently where they actually require you to pay a fee of 95$ along with your submission. In exchange for this fee, Invention City gives you “honest, professional feedback and suggestions for developing, protecting, and succeeding with your invention, with the possibility of a licensing deal”. If your submission does get accepted, Invention City “licenses your invention and takes care of all further development and patents and pays you royalties with no further investment from you (the royalty depends on many details including profit margins, how developed the invention is, patent protection, risk and investment requirements) or Representation whereby they present your invention to prospective licensees and help in negotiations on a commission basis”.

Invention City can and does support ideas of various categories as they have helped create consumer products, apps, algorithms, assembly machines and lines, perfumes and snack food concepts etc.

Unilever

This is by far the biggest and most respected name on this list. Unilever is a publicly traded company known for producing many products that have been in the markets world wide for a number of years. With their vast resources and world class R&D facilities, Unilever has the ability to take any idea on and turn it into reality. However, Unilever does like to focus on their own particular wants and needs and would work with you only if your idea is able to resolve some of the challenges that they are looking to resolve. A list of their open challenges and wants can be found here. If your idea can help address their needs, you can expect to partner up with one of the biggest brands in the world.

In Conclusion

So there you have it, the above list contains a few places where you can take your idea and have it see the light of day. Though selling your idea to a third party may not seem that attractive at first, but it might be a path worth exploring for some. It may not always be feasible to go through the nuanced process involved in bringing some ideas to life. If you lack the funds and resources to monetize a great idea, what good would it do if it remained in your head forever. You are better off earning royalties off your invention without having to lift a finger.

If you are looking for more ideas to increase passive income or learn about investment, make sure to check us out here for many tips and tricks to improve your financial outlook.