Finding and Testing Your Idea

We’ve discussed previously the topic of what do you want to do online and we’ve also discussed how to plan out your time management to work on your new online business or blog. Now we will discuss Finding and Testing your idea.

For some of you, you will have quite a few ideas on what to build your blog or online business around. For others you may need a little bit of help to find your idea.

If you have found your idea start writing ways in which you can build and grow your idea then focus on the testing your idea part of this article. For those still looking for that idea, keep reading and we will see if we can find you your idea!

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FINDING YOUR IDEA

After going through your online goals and figuring out what you want to achieve online, a lot of you may have your mind may have been overwhelmed with ideas! For others though, you may not have had that definitive idea that you want to build a blog or website around.

So how to find an idea in which to build around?

Take a look at your life. Take a notepad or use your phone to write down ideas that come up as you analyze how you spend your days.

Any daily frustrations that you could build a business around?

Look at how you spend your time? What about past experiences, anything come up that excites you to build a business around?

Do you have a talent? Do you have a hobby?

Is there something you are asked by your friends to do? i.e. dress making skills? teaching guitar? inspiring others?

From these basic questions you may have already come up with a couple of business ideas already. If you are just getting into the online world I would suggest you focus on the one idea though keep your other ideas handy (you may want to look at these once you have established your first blog or online business).

For those still hunting for their idea, let’s keep looking. The fact that you are taking action (even if you haven’t found that idea yet) has you well in front of others who are merely dreaming of doing something online. 

Is there anything in this list below that gives you an idea to start something?

Entertainment

Sport

Lifestyle

Education

Health

Art

Finance

Movies

Books

Fitness

Fashion

Technology

Food

Travel

Design

Crafts

Gardening

Outdoors

Or even niching down from some of the above examples:

Television shows

Self help

Teaching others

Health tips

Favorite artists

Investment ideas

Favorite movies

Favorite books

Fitness programs

Favorite designers

Latest gadgets

Delicious recipes

Favorite cities

Luxury house designs

Craft ideas for kids

Landscaping ideas

Favorite hiking trails

Digging deeper for an idea, ask yourself some of the following questions:

What are you good at? i.e. Musical instrument, public speaking

What skills do you have, what abilities or talents? i.e. cooking, creating spreadsheets

What hobby or hobbies do you enjoy?

What are you passionate about?

What are your likes, what about your dislikes?

What do you search online for regularly?

What do you shop for or buy regularly online?

What content do you consume?

What courses or training do you enroll in?

What online videos do you watch?

What extra knowledge or training do you have?

What problems do you have that you or your friends have?

Have you overcome a problem or adversity that you could share with others?

Is there an idea or ideas from above that you could build a blog or business around?

Failing that you could always create a blog about your life or some aspect of your life that others could learn from. An example of this is with mommy bloggers who share tips about raising their children.  You may also find an audience wanting to know what you did today, things you’ve learnt, tips you’ve picked up, movies you’ve watched, books you’ve read, etc (similar to a lifestyle blogger or influencer) however you will need to be unique to stand out in this field as it is very competitive and quite difficult to monetize if you don’t have a large amount of traffic.

You may not have found an idea that excites you but not necessarily the idea. If that is the case then you can look at interviewing several people in that niche and asking them what is there biggest issue or what is their biggest problem they would like solved and there may be a business idea from this.

For nearly all of you, you should have found an idea to start researching for your new blog or online business. For those that don’t, send me an email and we will see if we can come up with something.

Now you have your idea, what’s your blog or website going to be?

Let’s come up with an example which we can workshop. In our example we will use the example idea of Outdoors.

Now using Outdoors as your idea gives a huge array of options of where we can take this site.

We could start with a blog about hiking in the outdoors, we can promote outdoor equipment, we could then progress to creating an e book about what you need, how to prepare, etc for your first hike.

You could create a site about camping, about boating, about outdoor holidays, about nature. All these examples fit in under the general topic of outdoors.

If your idea is to fit under a general topic I would suggest (at least in the short term) that you niche down in this topic. Using the outdoors idea an example for a niche could be camping.

With your idea, take out a blank piece of paper and spend the next 15 minutes writing down all the ways you could build your blog or online business around your idea.

If you are struggling a little with this, type in your idea into google (you could even add some derivatives to this search) and see what comes up. You could even look through Amazon, YouTube or Pinterest for your idea.

Even a website like askthepublic.com will provide some suggestions regarding your selected idea.

Also, your idea might be about selling a product or products.

You could start down this path by setting up an e bay account where you sell clothes or items you no longer use, or you could search your local department stores for specials and flip these on a site like e bay for a profit (though you’d want to factor in shipping and other costs).

You may even want to go down the route of creating or selling your own product.

Whether it’s designed from scratch or getting ideas from a site like Amazon and outsourcing manufacturing of your product through a site like alibaba.com.

You could venture down the path of selling products on Amazon or through drop shipping or FBA (Amazon).

With all of the above suggestions there is so much to pick your idea from!

TE$TING YOUR IDEA

Now coming up with your idea is great, we now need to determine whether it’s worth putting in the time and money into this to build a business around. As we want to make money from our online venture we need to test as much as we can.

A simple way of testing an idea (at least on a small scale) is to put together a small sample of your potential offering or a small sample of your potential product.

If you are looking at building a blog or basic website, put together a small sample of your content and reach out to your social circle for feedback and potential subscribers. Ask them what they think of your ideas and if they would be interested in subscribing once you have set your website up.

For a physical product that is on the small scale (such as a cup holder) you could invest a small amount on money on samples and test this with your social circle, getting feedback on whether you should scale this product creation and bring this to market.

If your idea is a physical product (providing manufacturing is relatively cheap and the product is on the small side such as a cup holder), contact friends, acquaintances, etc as well as checking on the internet (through google trends, amazon top sellers or through forums) then you need to organize samples from suppliers or manufactures to test with your beta group.

If you don’t a large social circle or would like to reach out to a more people, there are other ways to test your idea.

You can use the website Google Trends to test if your idea has a lot of search traffic. Or as mentioned briefly above, you can look for Facebook groups, Pinterest groups or online forums that are focused on your niche or topic and reach out to group members or readers with your idea for feedback. Research the group feedback, what are their issues and frustrations, what questions do they ask in the groups or forums.

To determine whether there is money in your niche, research your potential competitors to see what they are producing and selling. If it’s a blog or branded website, are they selling any products, is their website generating traffic? If they are selling products how popular are these? What price are their products?

What about testing whether certain keywords are profitable. Use the google keyword research tool or a product such as keyword’s everywhere. By installing a product like keyword’s everywhere onto your browser, when you search keywords or phrases you are provided with an approximate search volume for that particular word or phrase as well as an approximate cost per click (CPC) of the word or phrase. The CPC amount is what advertisers are prepared to pay for advertising for that keyword or phrase so in theory higher CPC, more potential profits. Remember though more potential profits more potential competition.

Use sites such as Google Trends (as mentioned above), Amazon Top Sellers, Pinterest and even YouTube to see what is ranking high or getting lots of views, particularly in your niche or related niche.

If your idea is a brand or content similar to the above you can search google trends, you can get inspiration from YouTube or amazon (both are forms of search engines) as well as forums or even look at using a crowdfunding site.

You can create either create a landing page with some form of enticement for subscribers, create a small piece or content as an opt in on a landing page or if you are happy enough to move to the next step you can go fully into the website/content creation mode.

Testing your idea is like the above (minus contacting the supplier or manufacturer). If you are happy with the research you have done, the ability to earn revenue from idea in your selected niche then move towards creating your website and your content. Before you hit this stage, you need to come up with a business name/domain name.

Put some effort into this, make sure that you do your research on your selected domain name (if it’s available make sure it’s not the name of an existing company who could have a claim for the domain name) and if it’s all ok then move to the next section.

Suggestions

1. Don’t necessarily worry about wanting to enter a popular niche or a niche that everyone blogs or writes about. This usually means there is a market for your niche and if your content is great and you nail your marketing you will be successful!

2. When thinking of your niche or idea, it will be a lot easier to succeed if you are familiar with your topic and you enjoy writing about or talking about this topic. This will lead to other ideas you can add to your blog or website and will help you get through the periods when you are struggling in building your blog or website.

3. Have a plan with the content you produce. For example, if you had a camping blog, you might write a serious of posts about how to have the perfect camping trip. This could be a post on select the right campsite, select the right equipment, time of year, activities to do, etc.

4. Stick to one niche initially. For most successful people online they tend to focus on one area. Whether that is fitness, motherhood or public speaking to get to where you want to get to faster, stick to one niche in the beginning. Once you become successful you can then branch out to other niches or other businesses using the experiences that you have learnt from your initial blog or site.

SUMMARY

Finding and testing your idea is one of the big steps to starting your online journey. Making sure you find a topic or niche that you enjoy/have experience will speed up your learning curve. Setting this is a profitable niche makes earning an online income that much easier.

Remember to focus entirely on one area at the start. Eventually you will become somewhat of an expert in that niche or topic and getting people to visit your website or buy your product will be that much easier. If you are creating a blog or website try to put some of your personality into it. Most successful blogs or websites have a great way of doing this and connecting with their audience.  Finding your niche is the first step, building a great site with great content to build a business or website around and attracting visitors is your next step!

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