The Plan

So, what I'm going to be doing over the next week or so, is building the site up (layout, adverts etc), attracting (and hopefully sustaining visitors) and generally beginning the preparation for the project! I actually think I'll be able to get the first clue up here within a fortnight having looked at what I need to do, but this is subject to some change.

Any feedback/ideas/thoughts you guys have would be appreciated! Also, of course, if you like the idea, spread the word! This sort of venture succeeds largely on the support and visitation of lots of people, so I need numbers to ideally grow exponentially over the next few weeks!

The Grand Hunt!

So, let's start at the beginning.

A while ago I had this crazy but fun idea to do a sort of online treasure hunt. I'd create a really intricate, enjoyable treasure hunt that utilised websites, information, tools and applications freely available on the web to create a series of puzzles, tasks and clues that built up to reveal the "final" answer to the treasure hunt; the location of the treasure! The first person to successfully reach the treasure and answer the question would receive a prize; let's say something like $5 or $10,000.

Now, I actually did some work on this idea and came up with a pretty decent idea for a treasure hunt. It had all sorts of cool puzzles in it; analysing pictures, using Google Earth to find things, having to hunt down information across the web, cracking codes and puzzles etc. I developed pretty much the whole "hunt". But, of course, there was a problem: The Money! I clearly didn't have a spare $5-10k on me so I wondered how I might get the idea off the ground. My initial idea wasn't the best; I was going to try and get people to donate money towards the cause and reveal clues as the money built up. There were a variety of problems with that idea, the biggest problem being trust, really. Why did people want to give even a dollar to this cagey sounding online "hunt" in return for the supposed potential to win money? Naturally I didn't receive too much interest in the whole project, although a lot of people responded favourably to at least the concept.

Well, I've grown up, lived (a bit), learnt (not much), and realised that there is quite a lot of money to be made from blogs and blogging these days, and by driving high numbers of visitors to your site. I wondered if it might be possible to resurrect this project in a different form. Instead of asking for donations, raise money through advertising and drive people to this site by putting the clues up here and regular updates. When the first person to crack the puzzles, complete the hunt and give me the answer got back to me (I'd post up an e-mail address to send answers to), I'd use the advertising revenue to pay the prize. Nobody is a loser that way. The visitors get to participate in the hunt without having to "donate" or pledge any financial support, but the prize money is still there and it could become a really exciting and enjoyable little project for people.

So, that's the idea, in a nutshell. It's crazy but there are people making a lot of money from blogs and I thought it's the sort of online model that might just work out. Everybody is fulfilled in some way or another, and it's just the crazy kind of idea that could take off, without any real risk or sacrifice from anybody.

So, I'm going to be re-designing and tweaking the "hunt": the clues, puzzles and conundrums that built up to create the hunt, over the next few weeks. In the meantime I'm going to be trying to drive people to this site, check out the feedback, and (hopefully) begin building up a base of support and testing the validity of the idea out. Assuming all goes well, I hope to post the first clue up in around 3-5 weeks, and the hunt begins!