How to come up with things to sell 🤔

Hey friends,

In my last post, I went over the different ways to make money online. Today, I want to go over how to brainstorm what to sell.

If you want to start selling something online, and are unsure of where to start, here are 5 practical techniques you can use to come up with ideas to work on, whether that be selling a product or a service.

The first place to start is to think about something in your own life that you would want to exist. This could be:

It’s easier to swim with the tide than against it. It’s easier to sell something people want than to force them to be interested in something. That’s where using data comes in. There are a ton of places for you to look for trends, to see what people are currently looking for.

Since Google and Facebook alone account for the vast majority of ads running online, just looking at those two channels will give you the best indication of user demand.

Probably the biggest mistake I’ve seen by aspiring entrepreneurs is asking people what they should create. They usually do this by having them fill out questionnaires or surveys.

This is a bad way of doing customer validation.

Why? Because if you ask someone if they would buy something, bias could creep in.

Either:

1) They would be too honest with you and make you feel discouraged (telling you how it’s a horrible idea and would never work).

or

2) They would tell you it’s a great idea when they don’t really like it (people are sometimes too nice).

So what do you do?

The best way to validate a business is to start selling, and see if there is demand.

But what if you’re not ready for that?

The next best way is to see what people are discussing online in their natural habitat or “water holes”. This can be on social media, blogs, forums, groups (Facebook, Slack, Whatsapp etc).

For example, you could go on parenting forums, Facebook groups etc. and see what issues parents are facing, and build a product or service around that.

The movie Catch Me If You Can follows the real life story of Frank Abagnale, one of the most famous con men in history. As a teenager in high school, he starting teaching a French class for weeks, despite not knowing French! When he was asked how he did it, he answered “I just had to be one chapter ahead”.

Think about how that applies to your life and profession. If you want to teach others something, or offer a product or a service to any skill you have, you don’t have to be an “expert”. You just have to be one step (or one chapter) ahead of whoever you are teaching.

I’m sure that all of you reading this could teach me about something that I don’t know.

Whether that be accounting, painting, fitness, or knitting, everyone has something they know better than the average person. Think about that skill and then you can package it either as a service you offer, or a virtual product (read last week’s issue for more on the ways to package your offering).

The idea of flipping is that you take something that you can acquire for a low price (usually a physical item), and then you charge people more for it (known as flipping). This is one that has recently become very popular due to Gary V. Ways to flip things could be:

Brainstorm the 5 ways I discussed here, and try coming up with ideas in each of them. I’m sure you’ll find something new you never thought about!

Next up, we’ll be covering how to do market sizing to figure out how many potential customers your idea could have.