This is the third article in the series "Success: Target a Good Market Niche with a Proper Product"
No matter how much you like your idea, don't be in a hurry. Don't invest your time and money into a new business until you make sure you'll be able to profit from it. It would be very disappointing to spend half a year and thousands of dollars into a new product, and then to be unable to sell it to anyone.
First of all, think, would you buy such a product yourself? If you feel doubted, then you should probably work on another idea first.
Ask your friends if they would find your product valuable. Maybe they would, but with some changes - write them down.
Try to estimate your market niche size. Internet can be useful here. Look at the search engine statistics, try to find information about the size of mailing lists devoted to your problem, find your potential competitors and think what will make you different. Make sure your target niche will be not too large and not too small.
Make sure your target audience is easily reachable online. Find and collect the addresses of web sites, online forums, and other Internet resources related to your product. Those are the places where you'll want to advertise and seek for joint ventures.
When you have the addresses of the related online resources, conduct some research in target audience. Place some announces on the Internet and see how people react. If someone follows the links in your ads, or writes you email showing some interest, then your product will definitely be worth something to someone. You can even estimate the price by simply asking people how much they would pay for the solution to their problems, and how much they usually pay for similar products.
As you have probably noticed, the process of finding business ideas and estimating their potential is rather time-consuming. You probably don't want to spend several months just searching for ideas and evaluating them. You may be late by the time your research is over, because someone else can take up your target niche with his or her product at that time.
We can help you here! Our NicheFinder market research software will browse the Internet for you, look in search engines and other related pages for product ideas in your field, and help you to estimate the potential of each idea by collecting statistics from search engines. It is all done automatically, and very fast! Click here to read the full NicheFinder description.