Do you want to make money with your invention?

This is an important question to ask when you are deciding what to do with an invention idea. For most inventors the answer is yes but not always.

Some inventors do not care about making money. Some just want to say they have a patent. Some may want to give their patent rights away so the technology proliferates faster.

Thomas Edison wanted to make money, I am no historian but from what I understand, Nikola Tesla wanted to invent and died poor man. Tesla was an advocate of AC for power transmission which is used worldwide to this day.

When you work at a large company as I did for years you are required to sign your patent rights away for anything you create while working at the company. Usually you will get a bonus of a couple thousand dollars for it.

Licensing an invention is one way to make money but remember what I said. In the corporations eyes the value of a patent is a few thousand dollars. That may be why a licensing deals may only generate a few percent of profits for the inventor. Licensing without even attempting to make a product is attractive for most first time inventors (and invention companies), but it is not how the majority of companies make money.

Making and selling a product is the way most companies make money. You keep all the profits and in most cases do not need to sell very much to get your development money back. You just need to show the item will sell on a small scale. If sales grow with the audience then if you want to sell the invention a buyer can calculate its value based on audience size.

For example:

Your Corner store sells 2 units a day:

1000 corner stores sell 2000 units a day:

So the first 5 steps to start making money with your Invention:

Make some units
Sell some units
Make improvements based on customer feed back
Show a profit
Show Scalability