You're going to find that one large prize works best most of the time. This is particularly true when you're asking your audience for something non-trivial, such as completing a survey or providing their contact information. This might be expected when you consider that more people are motivated to gamble by a chance to win one huge jackpot than doing a bit better than break even.
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You should expect to find that business-to-business (B2B) marketing primarily involves communicating how you're going to save money or make money for potential customers. A key reason for this is that many businesses require a   group decision before making significant changes or purchases.

While it's easy to cast doubt over a potential qualitative improvement, it's challenging to argue effectively against something that quantitatively reduces costs or increases revenue. In other words, everyone stands ready to shout "I told you this waste of money wouldn't work," but no one wants to admit "It's my fault were spending too much or not  selling enough."

Once you can describe how you can help prospects save money or make money, the next step is determining how to best communicate this opportunity to the individuals that will most benefit.
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You're going to find that companies are interested in ideas that will directly save them money first, followed by ideas that might make them money. This means you need to think about strategy and find an answer to the question "Why would [specific company name] be interested in buying my idea?" If you're wondering why, the reason is simple. Saving money is lower risk.

For example, an idea designed to make a company money by selling more products will require marketing, selling, and other expenses before it has a chance of success. An idea that could save money won't cost them anything if it works since the savings will recover its costs. In a worst case scenario, the idea won't cost much if it doesn't work well since it probably will never be implemented.

So ask yourself, will your idea save the company money? If not, can the idea be transformed so that it will? It would be ideal if you can get to yes on these questions.
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It's my opinion that niches are created rather than found.

If you agree, then the process of making a niche can be simple. Start by identifying a group of people that share several similar interests, then exclude interests (and the people with those interests) until you've excluded 99 percent of the people. One in a hundred is a strong niche and the interest they share is special enough to build a community and rare enough to hold the community together.
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Take a look at Posterous.com before you do anything more. Posteroues is so easy to use that you can focus on your writing rather than blog management. You send an email to create your blog and send emails to add posts. You can 'upgrade' to a more powerful (read complicated) blogging alternative later, if needed. 
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