Best and fastest way to test market demand?

I have an ambitious financial goal for this year and I'm trying to find the best possible online project to drive towards this goal, which is effectively an project which could earn as much money as possible for the least time possible and which I am capable and willing to do.

The key of course is to offer something that is in high demand or alternatively offer something that isn't necessarily in high demand, but is so good and compelling that the instant people see it they want it! And of course, have a way to monetize this.

The difficult thing is how to determine whether something is in demand or not. One thing I tried with my current project is to start a very small and very simple adwords campaign for a single very specific keyphrase which directly corresponds to what I am selling. Basically it's so specific that if I were selling red themed web site templates the keyword would be "buy red web site templates".

After a few days it only had 17 impressions. Only 17! And NO clicks. Should I take this as a sign that what I'm selling actually isn't in demand?

That's just one approach I suppose, but the question is, how exactly do you determine if something is in demand or not? What is the best and fastest way to do that online for a digital product or service?

Thanks

 

Type in Google Trends your subject keyword and see the...trends.

 

Actually testing your keywords in Adwords is a very good idea......if there are very few impressions for your keywords you might not be targeting the best keywords yet. That doesn't mean there isn't ANY demand, just that you might need to find different keyphrases to target.

I wouldn't decide anything for sure until you have the following:

1) At least several hundred Adwords impressions on your keywords and
2) A decent amount of clicks through for those impressions and
(ideally if you can test this) 3) Nice sales conversions once people visit your landing page.

If you don't have a product yet, pick a comparable product on an affiliate network or try to sell an Amazon product.

For ebooks you might see 1 out of 100 conversions as your minimal entry into a market - if you're not getting at least that, rethink your keywords. For physical goods you can often do much better - 3 - 5% conversions being quite good in most markets.

Test a range of keywords, see how much traffic you can drive to a landing page, and see how conversions are on your test product that you're promoting - THEN figure out if you want to go into that market as a product producer or publisher.

Dan

 

Good advices, thanks.

I do have a service to sell actually. It's actually those web site reviews from my signature, but after offering 20 free reviews only 19 were actually applied for. If people didn't rush so fast to get it for free I'm beginning to wonder if anyone's gonna want to pay.. On the other hand maybe I just need to do more marketing, make the site's stats more attractive, throw in some bonuses.. I'm not sure..

I added a somewhat more general keyword to adwords now and within about 12 hours it got 39 impressions but no clicks yet.

 

If you are using ppc, you need to give at least 1-2 full days to test it before you determine whether the keyword is profitable or not.

 

Damn, I just realized I had the keyword performance pad on adwords set to show only today's results. Looks like the mentioned keyword actually got total of 485 impressions and 1 click. As far as impressions go then it's not too bad, but CTR needs to go up..

I just changed my ad slightly.