Validating my business concept

Hi all,

I’ve been researching my niche and blogging in general for quite a while and I think I’ve settled on a plan. I’m looking to validate and would appreciate your feedback and advice.

I plan to offer a paid course for building a sales funnel around a free email course. The focus is on designing the customer experience.

I would cover customer experience exploration, technical aspects regarding the website and sales funnel, as well as strategy for promoting content and the business.

My target audience would be new and established businesses looking to improve their sales conversions. Specifically, people looking for a structured, plug-n-go system they can get running quickly.

I’ve been posting this question to various forums and communities I belong to as an initial validation. If I get positive results, my secondary validation will be to launch a website with a free email course and offer pre-launch sales at a significant discount.

My questions are:

1. Would you consider this a profitable concept? Why or why not?

2. Is my secondary validation a good strategy?

3. What would you do next/differently?

Thanks in advance for any feedback, questions, advice, and/or constructive criticism.

 

Whether or not this will be profitable depends on 1. your content and 2. how you deliver it. Both of which we don't know anything about because it doesn't exist.... So I'm going to say it's possible if done right and very well.... if not, then it's a waste of your time.

 

1. I think it has a definite market, because many people wanna sale online, which is quite hard to do well. If I understand well you would launch a "sales funnel" to teach and/or coach and/or sale (as a procuct) a sales funnel.
You have to combine a free course with either a paid product (plug and play script) or paid service (expert advises). I don't know which is more profitable and which is more familiar to you. you should offer both and measure profitability.

2. Good idea to validate via a simple website. I would running A/B split test on Adwords to measure CTR, demand for Product and Service (advisory). If there is a huge difference, you may focus on the strongger one or specialized more for the weaker one to make you No 1. Provider in that niche.
I also put a fb or tweeter page to advise first visitors to follow you if they still hesitate to subscribe your free course.

Could you made me a favor to review my idea about hyperlocal blogging described at blogfields dot com.

As a rule of thumb 100-200 probable prospect (contacts) should be collected during a validation to put further effort for service/product/business development.

 

What does this even mean?

 

Took a look at your site. It is an interesting idea and the site is designed well, but it seems like a daunting task. You will really need to focus on driving traffic to your site. From there, your site needs to give your audience an understanding of what they will do once they claim a blog. It seems a bit unclear. Perhaps give some examples with plenty of visuals.

Also, the map function to claim a blog may be hard to use. For example, it requires longitude and latitude. Most will not know how or be willing to look that up. Maybe use a google maps feature?

Thanks for your advice. Hope mine helps!!

How would you go about finding prospects?

Ok. I will repost once I launch. Do you have any specific tactics or advice to improve my chances beyond writing good content?

 

Make two one page promo site (like my own example), with ask subsciption from the user for free service. One for free product, one for free serice/newsletter.
Promote the promo sites with adwords (paid). Measure CTR and subsciption for both. Work out, invest to the best one.

But, I afraid a simple promo site with limited informatiin maybe not enough to buy in, if the product/service is a new idea.
Maybe not clear, foreign for the prospect. Me and maybe you also, need an MVP (minimum viable product). It is a real product or service not just a pre-marketing promo subscription. It is need more work and money to invest. And if its faield, You may lost more (work and money).

In my case, the MVP should be a social network site with the following kind of users and functions:
-bloggers as the content owners of a specific geographic region
-users: registered visitors to search, comment, score (like), share, follow any kind of hyperlocal blogs
-admins: managing tha activities of the bloggers: regstration, promotions, sales, newsfeed, paid contents, etc.

I may use the paid version of nings or somethings othe social network engine.

For a new business idea no need to put so mutch effort for the product/service before validation.
Validation= collect at lesat 100 potential buyers before any product made/invested! For example, ask free subscriprion to inform the prospect when product is launched.
(prospect = people who may interested to buy your product in the future and give you his contact NOW for a probable purchase intent in the FUTURE)

 

He even knows his target audience and what they are specifically seeking too..

"My target audience would be new and established businesses looking to improve their sales conversions. Specifically, people looking for a structured, plug-n-go system they can get running quickly."