This post shares 2 methods to test business ideas fast, free and solo.

Biggest lesson I have learned building businesses: Treat your projects as experiments. Not businesses. Ship something small and valuable and validate demand first before going all in.

This used to be my go-to process to test a business idea fast and cheap:

I buy a domain name.

Then, I set up a basic landing page with contents of what I’m aiming to sell. I use no-code page builders like Carrd.

Next, I buy $50 worth of Google/Facebook ads to get people to click through to the landing page. My conversion goal is to get people to click the ‘Buy Now’ button on the page. When someone clicks, they are forwarded to a page that says: ‘We’re launching soon, drop your best email address to get notified when we launch’.

I build the product if I get a good cost per lead or feel the idea has legs. This process is simple, cost effective, and saves me from working on something that won’t work.

But there’s even a free and simpler alternative:

Articles.

I used to freelance on Upwork as a web designer.

This got me questions from friends on how to do what I do. It became tiring answering the same question so I wrote an article to point people to.

I published it on a forum and it blew up. People reached out with interest in my story. It became obvious that a lot of people wanted to escape their 9-5 jobs using their skills to go independent. I did consulting calls for free. I helped people get started and shared useful resources.

On some of these calls, I got offers for paid mentorship. I had my hands full with web design projects so I turned down these offers. But that gave me ideas on how to build a product around this big pain point.

I wrote an eBook around the biggest pain point I discovered. The eBook was centered around writing proposals to land jobs on Upwork. The eBook makes 1-2 sales per week with no promotions.

That experience was eye opening. Now, when I get an idea for a new business idea, I write a few articles to gauge interest and see how people react before making a decision to move ahead or not.

Free, fast and solo.

My new idea validation process:

- I resist the urge to start building right away
- Find communities where my potential audience hang out
- Write a detailed post to explain what makes my idea special
- Start building a product around the idea if the post gains traction

This process has the added benefits of:

- Building me an audience I can launch a project to
- Research and learn about what problems people are struggling with
- Getting in the habit of putting my ideas out there.
- Writing is fast and free. I can run more tests in shorter times to get my ideas out before picking which ones to go deeper on.

How to test business ideas with articles:

Step 1:

Find a platform with inbuilt audience.

Write a few articles on medium to get your feet wet. This builds the habit of publishing your ideas.

Quantity over quality at this stage.

Step 2:

Transition to a platform you own like Wordpress when the habit is built.

This gets you SEO juice to drive organic traffic and to build an email list.

Step 3:

Write about topics that can segue into a product or service.

See how you can write to test people’s interest in the eventual product or service.

Examples of how entrepreneurs have used articles to build businesses:

The fluent forever Kickstarter was built off the back of a successful book which was based off the back of this article on LifeHacker that went viral.

Naval Ravikant built Venture Hacks which was influenced by his successful blog Startup Boy.

Neil Patel’s KISSmetrics was influenced by his blog QuickSprout.

Get in the habit of putting out your ideas in articles. All it takes is one article to change your life.

Nichesiteseo:
This post shares 2 methods to test business ideas fast, free and solo.

Biggest lesson I have learned building businesses: Treat your projects as experiments. Not businesses. Ship something small and valuable and validate demand first before going all in.

This used to be my go-to process to test a business idea fast and cheap:

I buy a domain name.

Then, I set up a basic landing page with contents of what I’m aiming to sell. I use no-code page builders like Carrd.

Next, I buy $50 worth of Google/Facebook ads to get people to click through to the landing page. My conversion goal is to get people to click the ‘Buy Now’ button on the page. When someone clicks, they are forwarded to a page that says: ‘We’re launching soon, drop your best email address to get notified when we launch’.

I build the product if I get a good cost per lead or feel the idea has legs. This process is simple, cost effective, and saves me from working on something that won’t work.

But there’s even a free and simpler alternative:

Articles.

I used to freelance on Upwork as a web designer.

This got me questions from friends on how to do what I do. It became tiring answering the same question so I wrote an article to point people to.

I published it on a forum and it blew up. People reached out with interest in my story. It became obvious that a lot of people wanted to escape their 9-5 jobs using their skills to go independent. I did consulting calls for free. I helped people get started and shared useful resources.

On some of these calls, I got offers for paid mentorship. I had my hands full with web design projects so I turned down these offers. But that gave me ideas on how to build a product around this big pain point.

I wrote an eBook around the biggest pain point I discovered. The eBook was centered around writing proposals to land jobs on Upwork. The eBook makes 1-2 sales per week with no promotions.

That experience was eye opening. Now, when I get an idea for a new business idea, I write a few articles to gauge interest and see how people react before making a decision to move ahead or not.

Free, fast and solo.

My new idea validation process:

- I resist the urge to start building right away
- Find communities where my potential audience hang out
- Write a detailed post to explain what makes my idea special
- Start building a product around the idea if the post gains traction

This process has the added benefits of:

- Building me an audience I can launch a project to
- Research and learn about what problems people are struggling with
- Getting in the habit of putting my ideas out there.
- Writing is fast and free. I can run more tests in shorter times to get my ideas out before picking which ones to go deeper on.

How to test business ideas with articles:

Step 1:

Find a platform with inbuilt audience.

Write a few articles on medium to get your feet wet. This builds the habit of publishing your ideas.

Quantity over quality at this stage.

Step 2:

Transition to a platform you own like Wordpress when the habit is built.

This gets you SEO juice to drive organic traffic and to build an email list.

Step 3:

Write about topics that can segue into a product or service.

See how you can write to test people’s interest in the eventual product or service.

Examples of how entrepreneurs have used articles to build businesses:

The fluent forever Kickstarter was built off the back of a successful book which was based off the back of this article on LifeHacker that went viral.

Naval Ravikant built Venture Hacks which was influenced by his successful blog Startup Boy.

Neil Patel’s KISSmetrics was influenced by his blog QuickSprout.

Get in the habit of putting out your ideas in articles. All it takes is one article to change your life.

Cool. But you no dey reply someone's email, and its not a good habit, boss. Just have to say it here.

Instead of you to settle the thing once and for all, you'll send an email that you would reply later.

That's the biggest scam and indiscipline of role models, when novice are looking up unto them.

EmmaxKeys:


Cool. But you no dey reply someone's email, and its not a good habit, boss. Just have to say it here.

Instead of you to settle the thing once and for all, you'll send an email that you would reply later.

That's the biggest scam and indiscipline of role models, when novice are looking up unto them.

Sorry about that Emma.

I get tons of emails and do my best to reply to all/get back to some. But inevitably some fall through the crack.

Sorry again.

Don't stop sending.