To License or Create?

[shmay]

I have a product in mind. How do I determine whether I should license it to a manufacturer, or sell it myself from a website?

Invent Right advocates licensing it and letting the manufacturer do all of the work, while Tim seems to lean toward creating it yourself. Tips? Thanks in advance.

[Vagabond]

I have a product in mind. How do I determine whether I should license it to a manufacturer, or sell it myself from a website?

Invent Right advocates licensing it and letting the manufacturer do all of the work, while Tim seems to lean toward creating it yourself. Tips? Thanks in advance.

for me it would depend on how complicated it is... if possible i would hire a contract manufacturer on elance.com or thomasnet to do it for you. otherwise you can have them help you make a good prototype and then license it out.

there are pros and cons to both. if you license you get a smaller percentage. But if you license it out it to someone who can really take it places, itcould be a smaller percentage of a much larger pie.

on the other hand if you sell it yourself it would be a larger percentage of a smaller or larger pie. and also you have to worry about the sales and marketing of it, maintaining inventories etc...

theres no easy answer unfortunately.

[shmay]

Thank you, thank you. It would be an easy product to manufacture -- I can make a prototype myself.

To my understanding, if I were to sell the product myself, I would have to get a regular patent, which costs 4k - 7k dollars, correct? While if I were to license it, I would merely have to pay for the 100 dollar provisional patent?

At this point, I don't have 4k - 7k dollars to spare, which means I sort of have to go with the licensing option, right? Please correct me if I am wrong, it is crucial.