Product for Math Educators - 101 Grids

[kablooey]

I have a passive income idea. What are your first impressions?



CUSTOMER SEGMENTS: Math tutors, math teachers, math students. Maybe physics as well.

VALUE PROPOSITION 1: A pdf called "101 Grids", with high-quality grids of all types. Some will have grids across the whole page, some will have between 2 and 9 axes, some will be for trig graphs, others only Quadrant I, others will have space on the side for notes/calculations, etc. Downloading the pdf will save the customer lots of time. Teachers will be able to print out just the right kind of grid they need, then make homework, tests, and quizzes much more quickly and students will spend more time doing math instead of drawing various grids. Sales will, of course, be online, direct to the end user/consumer.

VALUE PROPOSITION 2: "101 Grids" in a spiral-bound book sold at teacher-supply and stationary stores. Sales will be made to retail stores.

VALUE PROPOSITION 3: Each type of grid could have samples of how the grid can be used to save time in making math materials and doing math.

Note: I am a math tutor and I use many of the grids that would be in the book. It saves me lots of time and makes my students' notes much, much easier to study from later on.

REVENUE: Charge consumers $9.95 for the pdf file. Charge retailers $8 for the hard copy and suggest they mark it up to $15. I will give away a sample pdf of 10 grids for free OR I may give away the entire file for free, but it will be watermarked with "FREE TRIAL VERSION" or something like that on each page.





POTENTIAL PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS:

1. There are a lot of free grid websites out there, but they mostly do not look professional. Plus, to find/make the right kind of grid(s) could take quite a while. It would be much faster to just flip through a ready-made pdf and ~$10-$15 seems like a reasonable price to pay for saving all that time.
2. I do not know anything about Google Analytics, driving traffic to my website, or how to test my idea for sales.
3. Piracy? How easy is it to put passwords into PDF files so they can't be shared/hacked/copied too easily?
4. Is 101 grids too many? What should the title of the product and website be?
5. What else would be immediately useful to math educators?

I have to leave now, but I will post some examples of the kinds of grids I use later.

Thanks for any feedback!

[Brutha]

Piracy? How easy is it to put passwords into PDF files so they can't be shared/hacked/copied too easily?

Part of your value proposition is that users will be able to print stuff from the PDF.
If you prevent them from printing (which includes printing to a new PDF) they probably won't like your product.

[kablooey]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Part of your value proposition is that users will be able to print stuff from the PDF.
If you prevent them from printing (which includes printing to a new PDF) they probably won't like your product.

Is it possible to allow a PDF to be printed but not shared easily?

[Brutha]

Is it possible to allow a PDF to be printed but not shared easily?

The whole point of printing something is to share it.

[kablooey]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The whole point of printing something is to share it.

Perhaps I am not being clear.


Of COURSE teachers can share things they print with their STUDENTS.

This is the standard way that schools purchase IP. For example, Gladstone Secondary, near my house, purchases pre-made math tests from a private company. Teachers at Gladstone then have unlimited rights to use those tests with their own students for the school year. They do not have the right to share it with other teachers at other schools.

This is a very standard setup and that's what I'd like to do with my documents.


I'm just wondering if it's possible to set this up with PDFs.

[Brutha]

Perhaps I am not being clear.

Yes, you confuse legal rights with technical ability.

One a legal level the two activities are different. On a technical level they aren't.