Use this simple process to test your idea and find out if your next business venture will make bank from day one.
Sign up for some free Google advertising credit. I got a voucher because I signed up and then chickened out so they sent me the $50 credit.
Set up a simple one page website. You can create free websites at www.webs.com and www.wix.com. I prefer Webs but Wix is the easiest to use. You don’t need to know code, it’s really simple.
Write a really simple sales page advertising your product for sale. If you are not sure how to do this, just google it. This is what goes on your website.
Make sure your page has a contact form and make sure your page tells potential customers that to order they need to fill in the contact form.
Set up your advertising campaign with Google Adwords (you may want to read Adwords for Dummies first) and advertise your product/service – linking it to the website
Set your advertising budget to the free $50
Count how many people fill in the contact form. If you can actually create the product or provide the service, you just got your first customer. If not, a simple email letting them know you are out of stock is fine.
Now obviously if you got paying customers from this experiment you know you are on to a winning idea so it’s time to create a great site, get business cards and all the rest of that jazz.
If you didn’t get any paying customers have a look at your sales copy and tweak that to perfection before having another go. If you still don’t get any hits, you might want to try a different idea instead. Now again, I do not want to discourage anyone from pursuing their dream. There would be thousands of examples of businesses that made money anyway regardless of if this experience flopped on them.
If you are passionate about your idea, go for it anyway! But……………….if your goal is simply self-employment, start testing those ideas out and save yourself the hassle and frustration of making $75 for the year.