How do you know if there is a market for your product?

Good questions and interesting observations, I'll give you my own personal spin on each (for whatever it is worth...)

> I know you find a need and then fill it.

Finding "needs" (I feel) is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. We could argue that you look for "wants" or "needs & wants & urgency" but I'll leave the semantics behind by saying--I know what you mean.

I think finding a "need" for a retail or restaurant venture is much, much easier than finding them for mail-order or on-line businesses. For these brick & mortar type businesses quite often its easiest just to compare the businesses in your area with those in other areas. Adjust for population and open a business in your area in an under-served product category.

I've found that profitable on-line and mail-order product ideas are much more difficult to come by. I think there are a lot of potential products but the cost and/or difficulty in finding a target market keeps these potential products from being profitable.

In a bricks & mortar business you tie up bunches of money in a building but if you're bright you can limit your risk by easily finding products or categories of products undersold in your market.

In a mail-order or on-line business you don't have the cost of a building and all that stuff... but you also don't have an easy way of making sure your product offering(s) are going to be profitable. This is where the whole testing thing comes into play. An on-line or mail-order business has to invest in testing... and probably a lot of tests concerning a great many products until a "gold nugget" can be mined. Very, very rarely is someone going to make a profit off their first product. I'm not saying it can't happen because I'm sure it has but the chances are pretty poor (in my opinion).

Anyway going back to my original thought "finding a need" and "finding a profitable need" are two entirely different things.

> It is also said the best product to sell is one
> you created yourself.

As I get older I tend to strongly disagree with this. Why?

I've met very few people in my lifetime and I'm talking a lot of very skilled business people that had the skills necessary to be both product developer and product marketer (not too mention all the various subsets included like "engineering, sales, human resources, r&d and what not".

Yeah, yeah I know we're probably talking about a small one-person-work-at-home type on-line business here but I still believe it's very difficult to create and sell (successfully) your own products. Yes, there are people doing it but I would be willing to bet there are many, many more that aren't doing it well. They're either into the product development or they're into the marketing. And I think there are many, many great products out there that aren't being marketed well that you only have to approach these owners/developers and do a joint-venture.

Mail-order legend Jim Straw has said repeatedly that knowing what he knows he would never develop his own products. (Jim, if I'm wrong about this just jump in and burst my bubble!)

To hit a "home-run" with a product you need to be at the top of your game and that means with marketing and with a product that is top notch. Most people I feel don't have the capacity to do both and do them well.

> Informational/electronic products being the
> best.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Why? Because you don't have any inventory investment? Inventory investment should only be a small piece of the puzzle. And it (inventory cost) should rank below the quality of the target market and the ease of accessing that target market. You show me a product that is selling well in a test mode and I'm sure I can find you money for inventory.

> But what if you have found a niche and
> an idea. How do you find out if it will
> sell? For instance, I like word search
> puzzles. My children like word search
> puzzles. I have an idea for creating word
> search puzzles with a twist that is
> different than the normal everyday
> wordsearch puzzle on paper to be solved with
> pen or pencil. How would I go about finding
> out if this "new" product will
> sell? I plan on creating some and selling
> them on ebay to test the waters. Any other
> advice/suggestions?

Is this a product that can be marketed through classifieds? or display ads? or inserts? or radio? or billboards? in other words I need more info.

As far as ebay goes--for many products ebay should be considered a "wholesale" market. In other words people are buying and selling at perceived wholesale prices. These are folks looking for a 'deal' and they may or may not represent the best target audience for your product. I don't think your results from an ebay test would necessarily mean anything. You may find that you have to sell your product at a very low price in order to attract any buyers. And what does that get you other than a few sales at a low profit? Unless you intend to sell entirely on ebay you're going to have to have some profit reserved for marketing... and order processing... and fulfillment... and customer service... and r & d for the next product because it is a rare product indeed that is profitable all its lonesome (not too mention you end up wasting the rapport you've created by selling one person a product they're very happy with).

> Thanks,
> Ken

Thank you Ken for providing a good post to comment on...

Take care,

Mike Winicki