How to Validate Demand for Your Product

I didn&#x27;t write my book on how to break into consulting until I validated demand. Here were my step:<p>1. Write up a table of contents<p>2. Throw up a quick landing page on unbounce. This was the page I used <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;unbouncepages.com&#x2F;become-a-freelance-software-consultant&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;unbouncepages.com&#x2F;become-a-freelance-software-consult...</a> (but I did a 1month trial of Unbounce premium so I could cname it to codeforcash.zackburt.com)<p>3. Bought traffic on Reddit ads (&#x2F;r&#x2F;programming) and Facebook (programmers in USA). BTW, two young kids (a college student and a recent graduate) commented on my Facebook ad to bash me. The ad performed better <i>after</i> their comments.<p>I got email signups from Reddit at $4.50 net Cost Per Lead and from Facebook at $6.50 net Cost Per Lead. I spent a total of $100 buying traffic before I sat down to write the book. Although there was no way that 100% of the emails would convert to sales, (ultimately, about 35%+ of them did so far), it was clear to me that there was a potentially scaleable marketing channel (once I optimized the ads to drive down cost and improved conversion rate on email -&gt; sale). That, and people on HN constantly ask how to break into consulting, so I also intuitively believed in the market.<p>But these days I am reluctant to dive into anything unless I know there is a repeatable sales process. I qualify potential startups as employers or clients based on this belief – I don&#x27;t want to waste my time and I don&#x27;t want them to waste theirs. I&#x27;ve been burned WAY too many times by startups with products or services that haven&#x27;t been proven to have <i>economic</i> demand. Let people vote with their wallet not their mouth.

If you like the post, I recommend you to read Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer&#x27;s Guide to Launching a Startup[1] by Rob Walling.<p>&gt; &quot;Start Small, Stay Small also focuses on the single most important element of a startup that most developers avoid: marketing. There are many great resources for learning how to write code, organize source control, or connect to a database. This book does not cover the technical aspects developers already know or can learn elsewhere. It focuses on finding your idea, testing it before you build, and getting it into the hands of your customers.&quot;<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0615373968" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching...</a>

Heh.<p>That article ends with &quot;My online marketing course is launching soon. Buy now and get the early bird discount ($155 saving)&quot;<p>Like hell it is. He is doing the classic testing of demand. No class exists, but if enough people sign up then he will create one.

a thread with 140 points is not really a good gauge for demand<p>besides the n.1 issue in doing demand validation is &quot;people will say they&#x27;re interested into something but when asked to put money down very few do it&quot;<p>crowdfounding is a very good way to get people to put money down, but you need a huge reach for it to be a valid metric.<p>other than that, it&#x27;s mostly luck and bullshit.

I wish there was more detail about the pain-point-finding process. As is, simply looking for examples of current pain points is very prone to cognitive bias -- if you go looking for a pain point, you&#x27;ll find one, but how do you quantify the intensity of pain and willingness to change solutions? Maybe more of an overall competition-assessment strategy (rather than a specific pain-point-search) -- if you research the current shortcomings AND high points of current solutions you&#x27;ll have a much better understanding of the value your product can add.

If your product can be crowdfunded on kickstarter&#x2F;indiegogo I think it is a great exercise to get you to think critically about your product and validate demand.

Thanks for sharing. This is really helpful. Has anyone else done this before? If so, I would love to hear other methods.

I let this tab open on my Chrome and it just used 3GB of data, 97% of CPU after some time. Is somebody facing the same?

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I would invest in a weed ETF. How would you even go about setting that up? Let me know when it&#x27;s available!

Paid traffic from facebook and call to share if liked - one of method to test idea also

Nice article! Good breath of fresh air from the fluffy blogs out there.