This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
How can you assess market demand for a side hustle idea? Welcome back to Side Hustle School. What's up, friends? My name is Chris Guillebeau. How do you know in advance if your idea is going to succeed, if you've got an idea for a product or a service, or it could be some kind of affiliate project, it could be all kinds of options?
How do you assess market demand? And do you even need to do that? Maybe that's actually a better place to start. Do you need to assess market demand or can you just try stuff? And if you need to assess it, if you feel like it's really important to have some idea if there's demand before you actually get to work and produce this side hustle idea, how do you actually make that happen?
So if you're in the early stages of an idea, if you're just kind of exploring or if you're considering four or five ideas and you need to narrow it down, understanding where there is consumer demand for this particular idea could help you a lot. So let's talk about some ways to do it. It can be complicated, but let's not make it complicated. Let's make it simple. Detailed question from Josh, our listener, and my answer in this episode.
Hey, Chris, this is Josh from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thanks for all you do. So I've got a side hustle idea, but I'm not sure if there's enough market demand for it. How can I assess whether there's real interest in my idea before I invest too much time and money? I'd love to know what steps I should take to validate the demand and make sure I'm on the right track.
Lastly, this probably won't be a surprise, but I'm looking for free or low cost ideas. All right, as promised, I wanted to focus on some simple steps for assessing market demand. So this could be done in lots of ways. Could be very complex. There are companies that spend tens of thousands of dollars on it for a single product launch.
Of course, Josh is not going to do that. None of us are going to do that. So what are some simple ways to do it? Well, let's begin by researching a target market or an ideal customer, as I like to say. So who is that person?
Who is that single ideal most likely to need or want your product or service person? And to find this audience/ideal customer as specifically as possible, considering factors like age, location, income level, and interests, I really like to think about psychographics more than demographics. Psychographics are beliefs, worldview, hobbies, things you like to do, all that stuff that's a little bit different from just traditional demographics. Also, research competitors. So look at businesses offering similar products or services.
Are you the only one who's doing this? That could actually be a problem. People are always looking for an incredibly unique idea. Sometimes that's great. Other times it's helpful to understand that there is, in fact, a market for your product or service.
You might be doing it a little bit differently, but it's not the first thing like this that's ever come out. Surveys and feedback. Next option. There are some online tools like SurveyMonkey or I just use Google Forms often, just really simple. You can go and ask a few representatives of this target audience about their needs, preferences, willingness to pay, share it through social media, through an email list if you've built that up, or any online communities you're not selling, you're just garnering information and feedback.
Now next, instead of launching a full scale business, start with a simple, minimal version of your product or service. I'm a big fan of MVPs, minimum viable products. I try to avoid startup e-language here on this podcast because a lot of our listeners are not into having a startup, which I totally respect, but I like the MVP concept because it's just what is the basic, most simple version of this that we can create. If people want it, then that's great. Then we'll invest more time and attention, perhaps some money in making version two and beyond.
What else can you do? You can use keyword research. Google Keyword Planner is great for this, Ahrefs, A-H-R-E-F-S. These are free services they have paid versions to, to see how many people are searching for terms related to your product or service, and that gives you a good indication of how familiar people are or how much they are seeking out this particular product or service. So Josh, a couple ideas for you there.
Start by researching your target audience, look at your competition, validate your idea through surveys, direct feedback, and by launching potentially a minimum viable product. This is going to help you understand if your side hustle idea is worth pursuing before you invest too much time and money. Good luck wishing you well, listeners wishing you well as well. Thanks for being out there, episode 2864. That's this one that you're just listening to right now, but of course new episodes drop every single morning, seven days a week, always free.
That's it for now. The next skill about this is side hustle school. From the Onward Project.
