The answer is twofold: a) you can submit a product idea during the submission phase, or b) you can rate other people's product ideas and/or choose your favorites during the vetting phase.

Nope - there's no fee to register with quirky. There's no fee to rate or choose your favorite product ideas. Mind you, if you want to toss your own product idea into the ring, well, yeah, then you've gotta pay.

Hey, plastic dinosaurs don't grow on trees. That, and you've got to ante up to post your product idea, have thousands of people check it out, weigh in, and give it the fair shot it deserves. Best case scenario? Your $99 investment takes you all the way to professionally manufactured product, on the shelves, ready to earn you a hell of a lot more. Worst case? Those 99 bucks buy you detailed analytics of who liked and didn't like your idea. Afterall, just because you may not have won the race this week doesn't mean your idea wasn't viable. Maybe you'll decide to go it on your own, and hey, now you'll have valuable research to help you go ahead and make that happen.

Say your awesome idea is the awesome idea of the week and chosen to move forward...right there, you've just earned yourself about 40% influence. If you want that to sound even cooler, we could say it like this - that means you're pocketing 12¢ for every dollar your product brings in. Seriously, that's pretty unreal. B-b-but wait, it only gets better...because your influence can grow just like everyone else's by continuing to weigh in and rate ideas throughout your product's process. Aren't you glad you chose to fly the quirky skies?

All you gotta do is put up $99 to post your product idea. The submission period is open for 7 days, during which time you toss your idea up onto the big screen (well, guess that could be a pretty small screen, too, really). 99 bucks dropped, the submission process is easy: 1) come up with a working name for your product, 2) write a blurb to help the community really get what the idea's all about, 3) upload any files of images, sketches, inspiration to further push your cause. Remember, this is your pitch - get us in your pocket, and you're that much closer to turning your idea into a reality.

Butofcourse...submit as many ideas as you want. $99 a pop.

30% of all top line revenue brought in by each product goes back towards rewarding the community...and when we say “community” we mean the person who posted the winning product idea as well as the influencers along the way. So even if you weren't feeling super inventy that day and you just rode someone else's project's coattails, you can still cash out for having influenced (voted for) one of the ideas that did win.

As soon as you earn $75 on quirky (in other words, as soon as "available funds" on your payments & moneys page reaches $75), we we will ask you to fill out your payment profile. Your payment profile will include info such as your mailing address (where you would like to receive your checks). Keep in mind this payment profile page is an SSL, secure, and encryped page AVAILABLE TO NO ONE except our finance and wire department. If you are a US citizen and you have a US bank account you have the option of receiving your payments via check or ACH. We will mail your check to you and obviously pay for the postage. ACH is a direct transfer to your bank account. Think – direct deposit at work. (Only this is direct deposit from quirky). If you are not a US citizen you have the option of receiving your payments via check (which we will mail to you and pay for the mailing fee ourselves) or if you’d like the money immediately we can arrange that this money be wired to you (the small wire fee will come out of your earnings).

Where you live shouldn't be an issue - we have users in countries all over the world. If you are not a US citizen you have the option of receiving your payments via check (which we will mail to you and pay for the mailing fee ourselves) or if you’d like the money immediately we can arrange that this money be wired to you (the small wire fee will come out of your earnings).

You can request your withdrawal any time there is 75 dollars or more in your available funds but not more than one request for withdrawal per week. We will process all withdrawal requests within 72 hours of receiving them. (aka your check will be cut within 72 hours of you requesting it or your money will be directly deposited within 72 hours after requesting it).

There is no limit to how much you can withdraw at any period as long as you have at least 75 dollars (all you x-namethisers will be happy to hear that one!)

Once you earn 600 dollars, we will arrange for tax info to be received. This will NOT be done on our website or on your payment profile page (for obvious security reasons) but will be done offline – either by phone or by snail mail.

Receivable means that we have sold product and we are waiting to collect the money and/or ship the product. Available funds means that we have received the money and the money is now available to you.

After the 7 day submission period, you can go in and rate all the ideas based on the criteria that we've set. Super easy - just slide the rate bars to the right to reflect how much you like each idea. The further to the right you move the bar, the more you like the idea. We've also given you some handy stars to allocate to your absolute favorite ideas. Choose wisely, grasshopper, you've only got a few...

You know what? We can't all win every time...but then again, when you submit your idea onto quirky, even if you lose, you kinda still win - or at least benefit. Whether your idea was picked to be the winner or not, we'll give you detailed analytics of who liked and didn't like your idea. That way if you choose to go for it, you've got valuable research to go ahead and build the product on your own. But there is one other option - if you want to give your product another week, just throw down $10 more and you can submit it again to roll it into the next week's contest.

Absolutely - if that's the road you want to take, go right ahead! No one in quirky's community nor the quirky team owns your idea. Feel free to run around and do whatever you want with your idea. All we're saying is that if you submit your idea into quirky, we can help you maximize, develop, build, and sell the product. And, hey, if you give us a go but we don't choose your product idea...we still love you (aw)...in fact, we'll even give you the data and analytics to help you go ahead and build it on your own.

If a product makes it through our process and hits its threshold of pre-sales, then we handle the patent (assuming the product is indeed patentable). For products that may already be covered by a patent, upon submittal, our research team looks into the idea to check out if the product already exists or has been previously patented.

Well...let's be honest, you don't know that no one is going to steal your idea. We're simply here as a place to get good ideas out of people's heads and into the world. But, in our opinion and experience, the community is just as good as any legal document - we've done this community validation thing before...couple o'sites we like to call mophie and kluster.

Hey, by all means - go build what you want to build. We're all for that. Our main jam is that it can be hard to do on your own...or at least in our experience it was...and it can kinda cost a lot...and sometimes means tricking your parents into remortgaging their house (cough, cough...Ben...). But we've done this before, which means we've got all the tools and resources that you need to get your idea out of your head and onto shelves. So if you're willing to simply risk $99 for your killer idea, it's totally worth it. Plus, you can't really lose - even if your idea doesn't make it, we'll give you in-depth analytics regarding your idea that will help you understand the type of people that are klustering around your idea. Through analytics, you can see how factors like age, gender, income, interests and more impacted the trajectory of your product idea.