Test a Digital Income Idea Without Spending Money
There are many would-be online entrepreneurs who are excited about a potential idea they have, but they don’t yet have money to test it with a viable audience. They believe you have to spend money for ads, use expensive software, have a top notch web design, and cover other expenses as well.
When you lack the budget to support the launch of a new business, especially when you are in charge of the entire thing on your own, the fear is enhanced because you can’t spend money you can’t afford to lose.
If nobody wants what you’re selling, then all your efforts and your financial investment have gone to waste. You don’t have to create and build an entire online empire in order to test an idea out.
If you make a product and the graphics to go with it, set up pages, invest in pricey tools, and get the word out about your launch without testing it first, that’s a risk you don’t need to take.
What you need to worry about is whether or not you can find evidence that your specific target audience cares enough about solving a certain problem that they’re willing to spend money on it.
There’s actually an advantage to being in a situation where you don’t have money to blow on an idea recklessly. You’re more conscious about what you’re doing, and you’re careful to look for proof instead of wasting a lot of man hours working on something that won’t convert.
Keep in mind, there’s a difference between whether or not people show interest in something and them being okay paying for it. You might get a lot of comments where people are congratulating you or telling you something sounds good, but that doesn’t mean they’d be willing to open their wallet for it.
Luckily, there are ways to test your idea for free that don’t include a full build of your concept. They’re going to allow you to put your idea in front of real people and see what reaction you get and if it will translate into profits.
While you’re doing this, each test that you go through will provide you with more evidence about if it’s worth spending more time on. This will give you the green light to find the money you need to invest in your idea because your research shows it will pay off in the end.
All You’re Going to Test Is the Core Concept at First
If you look at most online digital products, they’re fairly broad, even if the niche topic is narrow. For example, you may want to sell printable products, but you think you have to launch an entire store and have a whole selection for them to choose from in order to get started.
Or, maybe you want to teach people how to use artificial intelligence tools or you want to start a membership program of some sort. Most of these ideas you have are more about the format and type of teaching you’ll be doing but you’re going to narrow it down to a specific concept for a test.
What I want you to do is think of the exact identity of your potential customer. What one problem do they have where you could give them help to get a desired outcome based on your idea?
You might come up with something like, “I want to help seniors start a niche blog without tech overwhelm.” Your product can change later. Right now, you’re just testing whether or not the problem and result are strong enough to have support with your target audience in terms of what they’re willing to pay for.
Not all ideas are going to have the same potential. You can have the same niche and two ideas within that niche perform very differently with the audience, even if the information is needed.
It might be that your audience is willing to pay for one concept, but feels they can find the rest of the information for free. Also, the way you slant something can get a different reaction from your audience.
If you decide to go with a very generic slant, like a budgeting printable, you might not get an enthusiastic response. But if you create a planner for people who constantly run short each month before payday, that could hit on a nerve that makes them spend money on a solution.
Now is not the time when you’re going to waste hours and effort coming up with the perfect product name or logo. That’s not as important as finding out if your solution is attractive to the customer.
What you’re going to do with your test product idea is try to prove (or disprove) your assumption that a specific segment of your niche audience needs what you have to offer and is willing to pay for it because they find value in it.
Find the Evidence That Supports or Defeats Your Premise
The next step in testing your idea for free is to research the demand without spending money investing in ads or tools. You don’t need to go buy a market research report for this process.
You can find out a lot of information by using Google, Reddit, Quora, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook, and other niche forums where your target audience hangs out. You don’t want to just search for the exact type of product you’re considering making.
The goal is not for you to only study your competitors, but for you to find the problems and frustrations your audience has so you can develop your product to give them the desired result.
As you’re looking at the conversations and chatter taking place, I want you to take note of the way people talk and the phrases they use, especially when there is an underlying pain point involved.
What you’re looking for is strong demand. That means you see the same types of questions asked over and over again. Or, when someone asks a question, it results in a long discussion where people are sharing their insight, agreeing with the complaint, making recommendations, and generally acting like a community that has all shared in the same issue.
If you only see one person complaining about something or talking about that issue, that’s not a viable market for you to get into. Another thing you want to look for is urgency. Sometimes people will put off a problem and ignore it until it becomes something they can’t put on the back burner any longer.
If you can find people who need an answer that day, and engagement is high, that’s a sign that your product is ready to come to market. You also want to take a little bit of time to look at the competition on various platforms and see whether or not people are willing to pay for courses and solutions on the same type of topic.
There are some people who mistakenly believe zero competition is a good thing. It’s usually a sign that there’s no money in that problem, and you’d be better off looking elsewhere.
If you do find competitors who are selling the same types of concepts in your niche, don’t just look at the good things people are saying, but study the complaints and negative reviews as well.
This will be an eye opening exercise that shows you how you can set yourself apart by doing better than what the competitors are doing in your niche. You can start a document where you collect all of this information so that when you begin building your product, you don’t forget to include it.
You have to have an unbiased approach when you go through this step because your enthusiasm and excitement for your own idea can begin to cloud your judgment if you’re talking yourself into something deliberately when the reality is weaker.
When the Time Is Right, Get Your Idea in Front of People Early
After you’ve gone through the process of researching to see if people care enough about the general problem to pay for a solution, it’s time for you to find out whether or not a certain angle is going to get a better reaction and a better result for you financially.
I want you to create small pieces of content based on your idea and use it strategically in accounts that you already have. This could include things like a Facebook post or some sort of contribution to a forum that you’re a member of. You can even go to Reddit and post about it in the discussion, but don’t sell anything just yet.
You never want to announce to people that you’re thinking about creating a product and ask whether or not they would buy it. If you do this online, chances are you’re going to encounter numerous trolls who will bash your idea and deflate your confidence too early.
Or, they might be too nice, and give you a boost in confidence when the reality is it’s not a good idea at all. Instead, you want to teach people a small piece of your idea or make an observation about it where you’re discussing a possible solution and see how the discussion naturally unfolds.
Not all engagement is going to be valuable to you. If someone replies and follows up with questions, write those down so that you can address those in your product. If you get requests for more details or shares of your content, that’s a good sign that there’s potential there.
Depending on where all you plan to post, try to come up with different angles and slants for your content sharing. You might be more generic in some places and weave a sense of urgency or specific numbers into another post.
For example, a generic concept would be teaching people how to build a list, while a more specific concept would be teaching people how to add 500 subscribers in seven days.
Don’t worry if you don’t get a lot of response initially. That’s not necessarily a sign to abandon your entire concept. The audience has their own problems, and this is a testing phase for you to figure out what works and what doesn’t. You’re basically split testing your idea before you bring it out as a full product.
Now It’s Time to Throw the Bait Into the Water and See Who Bites
Getting people to comment, like, and share is one thing. But testing your idea with a slightly stronger commitment is important before you go to the effort of creating an entire product.
You can still test things for free and not spend money yourself or make others spend money yet. But you can have them commit with the exchange of an email address For more information, or spend time testing something for you.
Any time others are willing to give you their time and attention or trust you with their personal information, it’s a signal that you’re on the right track. You can create a waitlist of individuals who want early access to the product you’ve hinted at.
That doesn’t mean you come out bluntly and say, “Give me your email address and I’ll notify you when there’s an update.” Instead, you want to focus on the specific outcome they’re waiting for, and invite them to join the list or participate in a small beta group when the solution is ready.
People who are willing to take the next step are going to be a valuable resource to you – much more than someone who simply clicks the like button while they’re scrolling past your content in a feed. If you have the opportunity, reach out to a handful of people in your target audience who have shown a little bit of interest and pick their brains about what frustrates them most and what they’ve already tried so that you can come up with a better solution for them.
You never want to start pitching people for the sale at this point. If you are trying to hype up a product, it’s going to dilute the honesty of the answers and feedback you’re trying to collect at this point.
Instead of hoping to see generic feedback like, “Yeah that’s something I would use,” you want people to give you specifics about what they’ve been looking for or why they’re looking for a new solution when they already bought something previously that was supposed to help them.
If you develop an open line of communication with one or more people in your target audience, you might be able to ask what objections they have to products that are like your potential product.
You might get feedback that it’s due to products being too expensive or maybe what they purchased was too confusing or came up short based on the promises they read on the sales page.
At some point, you might have some individuals that you can offer a discounted pre-order to so they can be first buyers (or founding members if it’s a subscription) before you build the full product. Allow them to be transparent with you about their feedback, so their early access can help you sharpen your product before an official launch.
After the Early Testing, Build Cheap and Test More
It’s time to move forward now, if your idea has survived the earlier tests. But that doesn’t mean you jump straight into building a deluxe version of your concept. You want to build just enough to deliver the core lessons without all of the extras you might add later to impress potential buyers.
For example, you might start out with a live workshop for a small group of individuals. If you plan to develop some sort of software, then you might start out handling it as a service that’s manually carried out at first to see if they appreciate having something done for them.
If your plan is to create a big bundle of templates to sell, you might start with a limited pack of the top five you feel people will want to buy. If you’re doing an info product, you might compress it down into a short guide or a five day challenge that you can deliver via email.
There are many free tools you can use to get started, whether it’s a basic design tool or free levels of plans for an email autoresponder system. There are social media platforms and Google Docs that won’t cost you a penny.
Even if your competitors are using advanced tools at the moment, you’re still in the fledgling stage where you’re testing the profit potential. Just because you’re using free tools, that doesn’t mean you need to be sloppy about it and underdeliver to your customer.
You still want to gain a reputation for quality content or services. As you begin making your product available to customers, you want to make note of what people are responding to, whether it’s a particular feature or a certain slant.
You can ask for feedback from early customers and get their honest opinion about what you’ve delivered or what they wish had been included in the purchase. The tiny version that you release can bring in some money to put towards better tools for deliverables and presentation when you’re working on the full build.
Listen to the Test Results and Make a Firm Decision
The testing phase shouldn’t go on forever. You want to have an idea in mind about what gives you enough evidence to either move forward or pivot toward something else. You might have a bad idea or it could have just been a bad test.
For example, if your product was about retirement planning and the only feedback you got was from 20 somethings, that’s not going to show you much about whether or not your product could meet the demands of the marketplace.
If you hesitate to put yourself out there and you don’t go about the testing correctly, such as not posting enough, then you can’t really gauge whether or not an idea is viable. However, if you got the testing done correctly and still had no response that proved it was a worthy endeavor, don’t ignore that just because you personally like the idea of your product.
You’re either going to move forward with what you originally planned, make some tweaks and adjustments based on what you found out during the testing phase, or abandon the idea and try something else.
You have to start thinking now about the next logical investment. Is it going to be buying a page building tool so that you can create nice looking sales pages? Do you need some sort of design software or the money to outsource something so that you can proceed?
You might just need a simple domain and hosting, but whatever it is prioritize it and spend the money on whatever is needed to give your full product a fighting chance. What you don’t want to do is blindly continue on with a plan that received mixed results in feedback.
If you encountered some good and some bad feedback, try to iron that out before you devote time and money into taking things to the next level. Sometimes, your idea is too broad or vague and you simply need to strengthen it and weed out the people who aren’t really your target audience.
Whether you are on a budget and don’t have the money to invest in a product that’s not going to thrive, or you’re a financially savvy digital entrepreneur who doesn’t like the idea of wasting money, this is a process that can help you remove most of the risk.
There’s a big difference between spending money on impulse because you’re excited about an idea and investing money after you’ve repeatedly gotten proof from your target audience that they are sincerely interested in finding a solution to their problem.
The research is going to give you the first indication about whether or not you should create your product. The real reaction you get from the humans you’ll be serving is another form of proof.
Each time you level up your testing process, such as going from quiet observer during the research phase to generating signups and conversations or even getting people to make a small purchase, you’ll be gathering evidence to strengthen your decision.
Make your idea earn the money it needs to be turned into something bigger and better. You don’t want to make purchases and investments in software and tools based on hope and a dream.
You want market demand to show you why you should be spending money on something. As you go through this process, you may find it easier to change your idea because you haven’t committed hundreds of dollars to something that doesn’t deserve to come to fruition.