Can you reach the people who need your product?

There are many stories of products launched that failed because nobody heard about the product. But, there are few stories of websites with huge traffic that weren’t worth quite a lot of money at some point.

So many entrepreneurs put their product idea ahead of getting their audience. But here’s the thing–what happens if you start out trying to find the right audience instead of trying to find the right product?

Answer: you are much more likely to succeed and even better, you can find your audience without quitting your Day Job which makes you much less likely to run out of money.

The thing is, finding an audience is a learning process. You catalog your ideas for audiences. Perhaps some are driven by your product ideas. Others are driven by your passions, interests, and skills.

Catalog all of that and start searching the web. Where do audiences with the same interests hang out? Get an idea of your potential market size by looking at audience sizes.

Suppose you find 15 Facebook Groups that talk about a topic. Add up how many members they have. Next, what about Quora questions? What about YouTube? Are the LinkedIn Groups? Online Forums?

Those are the water coolers where each audience goes to talk about the topic. Add up estimates of the traffic or members for all of that and catalog the links in a spreadsheet.

Now you have a way to compare relative audience sizes so you can decide which one makes the most sense to go after.

Next, create a website and start writing about the topic. Can you attract people to come over from the water coolers to join the particular Tribe that is your weekly email newsletter?

If you can, youv’e proven you speak their langauge and understand what they’re interested in.

Do this for 6 months to a year before you quit your Day Job. Wait until you can reliably predict your email list growth and can see when you will have enough to be worth selling to.

You’ve just eliminated huge risks from your business by doing it this way!

Two articles from my blog worth digging into if you like this approach are:

Blueprint for Growing Traffic Each Stage of a Website’s Life:

http://bobwarfield.com/blueprint-growing-traffic-stage-websites-life/

Start with an Audience Not a Product If You Want to Win:

http://bobwarfield.com/start-audience-not-product-want-win/