Website Idea: Collect Product Design Philosophies and Stories

You probably have a product that you feel passionate about. It’s a product that you’ve absolutely fallen in love with. Now think about this product.

Don’t you wish you could learn more about the work that went into manufacturing this product? Who exactly designed it? Why did they design it in the way they did? What was their thought process? What obstacles did they face? Were there any funny turns and twists in the process of manufacturing this product?

This information isn’t only cool to know for a product you already own. You could probably get curious about those things with a product that you’re considering buying.

So, what if there were a website that collects this information on products? Here’s what this website would be like

The website is a catalog of products. The catalog is arranged by category: electronics, jewelry, shoes, watches, etc. Each product has it’s own page. The page has a calm appearance. It consists of text, images, and videos about one thing only: the design and manufacturing of the product. At the very least, the page should contain some-500-words article about the design of the product.

That’s really all there is to the idea. But it could make that who has the means to implement it very rich…

Content is King

What do typical Internet marketing or affiliate marketing websites try to do to make money?

They try to create product-related commercial content and publish it. The content is some times made of product reviews and other times it is simply made of the technical specs and a collection of snippets of reviews from around the web.

Needless to say, this is neither interesting nor valuable because every one is doing it. To get attention, you need to be unique, different, and new. You’d need to shine a different light on products. Talk about an aspect of those products that no one else talks about. For instance, talk about the story behind the product or…the design and manufacturing philosophy of the product! That’s one way you create content that is king.

Can it Be Monetized?

There is more than a dozen ways I could think of to monetize a website like this. After all, it’s a highly commercial website. It is about products that are being marketed and sold! So, of course it can be monetized. Here are a few ways to monetize this website:

• Affiliate links for the products in the catalog
• Traditional banner advertising
• Provide additional exposure to products of sponsors (Read: featured products)

What Would it Take to Start this Website?

Ideally, the designers of the products should be the ones who contribute to creating the content of the website. That way the content is interesting and authentic. But why should professional designers want to create content and give it to you?!

I would guess that it’ll be very hard to get authentic content from designers initially. Alternatively, you can research products yourself. Find out who the designer is, what their design philosophy was, and discover the stories behind products. Do that for a 100 or so products, build readership and an audience, and then finally contributions from professional designers may start trickling in…

This is obviously time consuming. That’s why I personally wouldn’t take it up. That’s why I wanted to share it here…perhaps this idea will inspire someone out there…