When selling a product, a lot of people
make the mistake of developing their product first, and then
trying to find a market for it. Of course, the process should be
reversed.
Find a market first that spends money,
then find out what they want and give it to them.
It is certainly easier said than done, but
there are a lot of places online where you can do your market
research for free. They've done most of the work for you
already. You just need to know where to go and what to do to
connect all the dots.
Let me show you the process I go through
when I'm trying to brainstorm for ideas.
For starters, I'm always aware of trends
and current events in the real world. I read several newspapers
each day, many magazines, both general and niche-specific, I
watch the news, I listen to the radio. Occasionally something
that I hear or read will stick with me. I may record my thoughts
on my portable voice recorder; jot down some notes, whatever
happens to be convenient for me. Sometimes I'll call my office
voice mail and leave myself a message.
But at some point I'll have several broad
ideas to research. I want to look deeper. And I want to make
sure there is a good market for them before I even think about
creating a product.
