How To Find Out Whether People Want What You Are Selling

Simply checking out the market interest in your product is not enough - you need to find out how much they are willing to pay.

How much money you can make in any market depends on many factors ranging from the quality of your offer to the effectiveness of your marketing.

But you want to put yourself in the strongest position possible so you should conduct some research to test the willingness of the market to pay.

Here are some of the ways you can do that:

1. Ask your customers: Ask your existing customers if they are willing to buy these products and services at the price level you want.

2. Use your own experience: Have your own customers demonstrated that they are willing to buy these products and services? Are they already purchasing this from another source? Have many people talked to you about how much they need what you offer?

3. Look at what the competition are selling: Are there other people offering products and services similar to yours at similar prices?

4. Check for other evidence of interest in the issue: Visit amazon.com and magazines.com and look for several books and magazines related to the topic. Notice whether there are many online forums or blogs or social networking sites on the subject?

5. Tap into all you can learn from a Google search: Google gives you a lot more than just simple search results. Here are some of the things you can learn from a Google search:

- How many searches are done on the topic: this shows the level of interest

- How much advertising runs on search pages: this shows that people are spending money

- How much competition there is: this indicates the health of the market

The secret of getting the best information possible from a Google search is in knowing the most appropriate 'keywords' to use in your search.

Start by brainstorming relevant keywords that people might use when doing a search on your topic of interest.

Think about what problems they are trying to solve, what brand names they would use and what other products or services they would look for in this area.

Brainstorm as many approaches to the words as you can.

The more specific you can be with your keywords the better. The term 'keyword' can encompass a phrase as well as a single word.

The free Google Keyword Tool is useful. It can be found at:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Here's what to look out for as you search with each keyword:

Notice how many searches are being done on the topic; you should be looking for a number of keywords which are being searched in total thousands of times a month. But remember that people who search won't always be buyers.

Look for the paid-for advertising along the top or down the right of the page when you do a search. If there are several advertisers, this implies strong demand.

Check out the sites that appear in your results and discover what people are already buying in this market.

If you can't find evidence that a market already exists willing to pay the prices you want, consider carefully whether you need to make changes to your plans.

But if you get clear and positive answers from these questions, you have a good chance of making money.