Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Karen offers great suggestions, here is my 2 cents:

a) check with extreme users, such as lifetime design/writer freelancers and people who just started out on this path on what would be most useful

b) check out which commercial products have been searched together with your keywords such as 'freelance', 'design' and 'writing'

At the end though, you will never have 100% certainty something is going to sell well, so try and experiment with a few promising offers, not just one!

Dear C.green,

Don't guess on this one: ask people what they want, then give it
to them. Your point about "helping freelance designers and writers" needs to be fleshed out.

Helping freelance designers and writers to do what? Learn new skills? Drum up new business? Market themselves better? Show
off their wares? Get a full time gig? Set up a blog? What?

You've got to be specific here because the thing that sells your product or products here will be the ability of each product to a solve a specific problem, to achieve a tightly defined outcome.

So yes, ask people. You can put together a spiffy looking survey form via www.SurveyMoonkey.com. Then you need to figure out how you will create this content, how long it will take you to create it, how much is will sell for and what people will buy it for (and note here that these points are NOT the same thing).

The value of your product will be in what it permits its buyer to do, not in how much the buyer pays for it. You'll need to weed out tyre kickers and freebie merchants by being extremely clear in your USP who the product is for and who it's not for. This cuts down on returns and refunds, and it helps weed out the riffraff of bargain hunters trying to nickel and dime you.

You'll find a 5 minute podcast on my blog about two kinds of buyers that goes into a lot more detail on this issue. You'll find it here: https://bit.ly/TwoKindsOfBuyers.

You'll also need to figure out how you will deliver your product:
MP3? Video? As a PDF? As a shippable CD? But that can come later.

On top of these points you need to figure out how you'll create
this product. Will you do it from scratch? Or will you leverage other people's content?

So, find out what people want to buy, then deliver it to them in a compelling way that clearly outlines what the product will do, who it will do this for, and how much long term value the product gives—NOT what it costs. Then come back and we'll chat more.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer,
Wilmington, DE, USA

Gary's suggestion that you ask your constituents what they want is a step in the right direction, and Survey Monkey is certainly one tool you can use.

Be aware, though, that this kind of research -- identifying unmet needs -- is not a simple, easy survey you whip together over the weekend. It requires professional insight if you want useful results. There are right ways and wrong ways to ask the questions. There are a number of different techniques available, and you need to know which ones are right for your situation.

Doing the wrong research -- asking the wrong or ambiguous questions, or surveying the wrong people, or structuring your analysis incorrectly -- can result in findings and conclusions that will actually lead you to the WRONG actions. This isn't something you want to take on yourself if you haven't been steeped in market research before.

Another guerrilla approach (if you can produce products quickly): outline a few different products you could create and advertise them on your website. Offer an early bird discount, and sell the products BEFORE you've started working on them. The product that gets sufficient sales, create. The others, refund their money. You don't want to sell something that people think they'd like - you want to sell something that people are willing to pay for NOW.

Are there questions that you find yourself answering repeatedly? What steps do you go through when talking to a new client? Document the solutions you regularly provide and the problems you solve.

Then, take those things and turn them into workbooks, audio programs, or ebooks and/or consulting packages.

Once you figure out what to sell, you might also check out Dave Navarro's web site for tips on how to do it.

https://www.thelaunchcoach.com/


Jodi