the hundred dollar business

Jump to Comments

Confession: It’s Not Fun Having A Project On Hiatus

It’s been a little stir-crazy the last 3 months, with The Entrepreneur Story being on hiatus.

I wanted the project to come to a satisfactory conclusion before embarking on a new project, but I haven’t felt right about spending a lot of time or effort to finish up The Entrepreneur Story. So it’s been a bit of a dilemma.

That said, I’ve been editing The Entrepreneur Story and also writing a “business plan” of sorts, to figure out what direction to take the project.

Anyway, in the meantime, I came up with a mini-project I’d like to try out, Human Census.

Meet The Human Census Project

As I get more serious about being an entrepreneur, I think about what marketable problems I can solve via a product or service. I haven’t settled on anything amazing yet, but I come up with ideas every now and then that sound fun.

Human Census is one of those ideas. It came from out of nowhere, and doesn’t have a lot to do with anything, except my own curiousity about the fact that there are 6 billion people on this planet, most of whom I know little to nothing about.

I think I’d like to know a little more about all of these people out there, and what they’re thinking about different topics and problems. So I’m taking a human census.
I’ve started a question-a-day blog, at www.humancensus.wordpress.com (it’ll be moved over to humancensus.com at some point), and I’d love to have you stop by and answer a question every now and then.

More About Human Census

In a nutshell, I post a question, open it up for any & all of the 6 billion people to respond to, and then I’ll report each day on how many people saw the question, answered the question, and what some of the notable answers were.

(Here’s more info about the project.)

The questions will be either insignificant or significant topics. The first one is largely insignificant.

Here’s what I really like about this new project:

1. I intend to spend very little time & effort on it.
2. I don’t intend to personally promote the site very heavily.
3. I will post a question a day, report site stats, number of answers, and highlight some favorites. Other than that, there’s not a lot else required.

One large problem I’ve run into with both Hundred Dollar projects thus far, is that the scope of work has been so huge that I couldn’t personally execute the concept and live a balanced life at the same time.

With this project, it’s still ambitious, but WordPress blogging software & basic word of mouth will do the bulk of the work.

All I have to do is consistently post questions that generate interest & report on the results. It should be pretty straightforward.

The Sum-Up

What will determine the success of this project? Well, that’s another difference between this project and the others. I’m not looking to judge a specific “outcome”, I just want to see what happens.

Will the project take off and become something of interest and value to others? A lot of others? Only a few? None? I don’t know– and, more importantly, I’m not attached to either outcome.

Because I’ve learned that attaching artificial labels like success or failure doesn’t serve me well in determining whether or not these projects are providing real value.

By the way, this isn’t a “business project”. I haven’t attached a revenue model of any kind to Human Census. I don’t know if I will.

For now, I just want to create something of interest and of value. So, let me know!