3 Steps to Validate Your Idea before Your Spend a Cent

In today's "Give me" economy, people want stuff and they want it when they want. No if ands or buts.

So many entrepreneurs tend to rush the process of creating something and getting it out fast. They think they are going the lean route.

But instead of researching an idea before they invest time and money, wantrepreneurs jump the gun and spend 6 months and thousands of dollars on something that NO one may like.

Why should you validate before you invest? I complied 3 simple steps. All of them are proven and based on my latest course The Alibaba Crash Course.

I validated the idea online and had 1000 dollars in pre-orders before launching it.

But more on that in a sec. Let's get into the steps.

Step 1: Get An Idea

business idea
photo credit: Hernani Larrea

If you have in idea you are doing great. Jump to step 2.

Most people can't make any money online because they can't think of a good idea. But really… what is a good idea?

How do you know if it is a good idea?

I would say you need to find something you wouldn't mind doing a lot of. So if it turns out to be a good idea, you want to push though. Because you will get bored and stressed out.

Just like raising kids, you wouldn't trade them for anything in the world but sometimes you want to slap em.

So brainstorm using this technique: Think of 5 things that cause you problems, 5 things you know well, and 5 things that you would love fixed, and 5 things that scare the hell out of you.

Then narrow it down from there.

You can also look at these sites.

Amazon Topsellers – Find what is hot on the market. What can you improve? What are they complaining about in the reviews?

Kickstarter.com – You will find numerous super simple ideas here. Kickstarter is an idea validator. Pure and simple. If people like it they back it, if not they move on to the next page. You can surely find out if there is a market for your idea by looking up similar ideas and their backing status.

Craigslist – You can check Craigslist for gigs and frequent requests. A lot of people want to find help to their problems. Find the most common ones and create a solution.

Step 2: Validate you idea

Build up a simple landing page.

Use LaunchRock.co for this. The landing page is instrumental to this entire process because you will give people a call to action here. You will either ask them to pre-order or sign up via their email address.

Other tools you can use for creating a landing page are Lead Pages (software as a service), Optimize Press 2 (theme and plugin), Launch Effect (theme), Lead Rocket (plugin).

Once you get this page up, drive traffic there via free or paid traffic.

For free traffic you can post in forums like Reddit or Hacker News.

For paid traffic, run Google or Facebook Ads.

If you send 100 qualified visitors to your site and 40-50 people opt in and or/pre-order you have a HIT! 40-50% conversion.

Step 3: Follow up and deliver

If you follow step 2 well… you can build a list of a couple hundred to a couple thousand people. For the Alibaba Crash Course we built a list of 1200 people.

Now you have to keep them interested. So I would set up a simple autoresponder that educates and gives them updates on the development of the product.

Try to stay in contact with them once a week at least. Give them great content in the form of blog posts or videos. People love this stuff.

When you are close to finishing your product, let your interested members know 1 week before it is ready and tell them exactly how to get it. Walk them through the entire process.

Once you deliver, just continue to increase your quality and audience. Find partners to promote for you.

So walking away from this process, make sure you do it right. Don't jump the gun. Take some time to make sure you have a hit and you will.

You path from nootrepreneur to anti wantrepreneur is clear. You just have to follow the process.

About the Author: Eugene is the founder of AntiWantrepreneur.com. He is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs achieve all their goals. He created AntiWantrepreneur.com as a learning ground for entrepreneurs. It is a place where aspiring entrepreneurs can get real advice from real entrepreneurs. Eugene also has a personal blog at EugeneHennie.com.