This isn't validating demand or even a business model, it's just "Get to the front page of HN". And if 15,863 people visited your site and only 13 registered your conversion rate is 0.08% not 1.8%.
I calculate conversion rate based on the number of people that hit the course page. That's industry standard. My goal was to test how many people that read about my course signed up. The blog post drives traffic to the home page, but I don't count blog readers if they don't hit the home page because that wouldn't be testing the right metric.
Conversion rates vary by business. A media company tracks the number of readers that click an ad. A mobile app tracks the number of visitors to the home page and download the app. This was the metric I picked to see if people were interested.
Don't those companies have established business models they are simply repeating at a profitable level?
I think all you have shown is HN is a source of extremely ineffective marketing for that idea. Your "what's next" seems premature too because HN can't get you "10x more traffic" and even a 10x better conversion will still be barely 1 registration per thousand visitors.
Tomorrow your old front page posts will send you almost no traffic, or ever again, so where is the business model let alone the validation? Still in the testing part, imho. $900 up but no closer to sustainable.
So far you've extrapolated everything from getting to the front page of HN once, but the more you do that the more their software learns who's helping you with upvotes even as you wear out your welcome in the community. That's not sustainable.
I think you could convince 13 people amongst a group of 15,863 to buy just about anything and that doesn't really prove demand either.
What would be sustainable is finding something that still delivers registrations/customers/money next week when your HN posts are unpopular and it's all tapped out. Somewhere that can actually deliver on the 10x more traffic you aspire to have next and thus worth optimizing your sales funnels for.
Can somebody clarify, is he validating the demand for his product by actually selling it? What if it's not profitable and you have to pull out I.e. only subscribes 2 students ?
I'm validating demand for the course before actually recording lectures. If only 1 or 2 students signed up and subsequent tests failed I would have refunded them their money. But so far it looks good so I'm planning on recording courses in late January.
You can learn more about the course here -- upupgrow.com
This is just shilling for a marketing course, using the same technique (sell vaporware, build it out if there's interest) that it describes at tedious length.
Well he just clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of his marketing technique. If he can provide useful information, and gain advertising at the same time, I don't see the problem. It's a win/win.
So I have a side project that was created as 2 businesses paid $3k a piece for me to create it. They also agreed up front that once delivered they would pay a monthly fee.
I am about ready to release it to general public. But my main tactic to gain customers was to leverage the initial customers to help market and sell to their network. As they are well known in their niche this is working well. As we have real world data on how it has improved their operational efficiency. So far have 10 more people awaiting on boarding.
Long story short find people who have a problem they are willing to pay money to solve right now. I do this by having varied hobbies and traveling to partake in them.
While this is not how validating demand works, I take issue more with the title of this blog post than its content. The techniques described are not necessarily wrong nor are they anything new nor even that useful. I'm not trying to knock this guy's hustle, but the headline is misleading.
With that said, the article is less relevant mainly because different products and startup ideas have totally different ways of validating them.
(eg How do you validate a new CRM SaaS product side project vs. validating starting a company like Hyperloop vs starting an "Uber for skydiving for dogs" company...? Not the same things at all.
Some folks may disagree and of course this is not always possible (usually due to budget?), but in my experience if you are serious about a product or startup idea then hiring a professional to do proper market/customer research is worth the cost, just as hiring a lawyer to do initial trademark research and handle corporate paperwork (employee docs, investor contracts etc.) is worth the cost.
Hiring a professional market research firm is cheaper than a lawyer. Start with it. But if you don't have the money, then any pro help is better than nothing. I am not a market researcher and I am just sharing my 2 cents and what I have seen.
Maybe because market research doesn't need a special license/degree like lawyers need or maybe because demand research looks easy to newbie from a distance, people think they can do it themselves. Most can't, and it's usually hubris to think you can or survivorship bias from startups that pulled it off. It will cost you in the vast majority of cases. There's always exceptions. Come visit NYC or Los Angeles and see the 10 million struggling arrogant writers who thought they could just write a successful movie script or book right away and didn't realize that professional experienced writers have skills they do not. Look into the "flop rate" of new products from companies that hire a professional market researcher compared to startup failure rates and it's clear that incorrect or lack of research is often a major problem. Good luck and happy new year.
I'm curious, is not linking part-1 of the post part of the strategy too? Of course one could spend a click & scroll to find it, but still was it intended ?
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 49.1 ms ] threadI calculate conversion rate based on the number of people that hit the course page. That's industry standard. My goal was to test how many people that read about my course signed up. The blog post drives traffic to the home page, but I don't count blog readers if they don't hit the home page because that wouldn't be testing the right metric.
Conversion rates vary by business. A media company tracks the number of readers that click an ad. A mobile app tracks the number of visitors to the home page and download the app. This was the metric I picked to see if people were interested.
I think all you have shown is HN is a source of extremely ineffective marketing for that idea. Your "what's next" seems premature too because HN can't get you "10x more traffic" and even a 10x better conversion will still be barely 1 registration per thousand visitors.
Tomorrow your old front page posts will send you almost no traffic, or ever again, so where is the business model let alone the validation? Still in the testing part, imho. $900 up but no closer to sustainable.
I think you could convince 13 people amongst a group of 15,863 to buy just about anything and that doesn't really prove demand either.
What would be sustainable is finding something that still delivers registrations/customers/money next week when your HN posts are unpopular and it's all tapped out. Somewhere that can actually deliver on the 10x more traffic you aspire to have next and thus worth optimizing your sales funnels for.
I'm validating demand for the course before actually recording lectures. If only 1 or 2 students signed up and subsequent tests failed I would have refunded them their money. But so far it looks good so I'm planning on recording courses in late January.
You can learn more about the course here -- upupgrow.com
I am about ready to release it to general public. But my main tactic to gain customers was to leverage the initial customers to help market and sell to their network. As they are well known in their niche this is working well. As we have real world data on how it has improved their operational efficiency. So far have 10 more people awaiting on boarding.
Long story short find people who have a problem they are willing to pay money to solve right now. I do this by having varied hobbies and traveling to partake in them.
With that said, the article is less relevant mainly because different products and startup ideas have totally different ways of validating them.
(eg How do you validate a new CRM SaaS product side project vs. validating starting a company like Hyperloop vs starting an "Uber for skydiving for dogs" company...? Not the same things at all.
Some folks may disagree and of course this is not always possible (usually due to budget?), but in my experience if you are serious about a product or startup idea then hiring a professional to do proper market/customer research is worth the cost, just as hiring a lawyer to do initial trademark research and handle corporate paperwork (employee docs, investor contracts etc.) is worth the cost.
Hiring a professional market research firm is cheaper than a lawyer. Start with it. But if you don't have the money, then any pro help is better than nothing. I am not a market researcher and I am just sharing my 2 cents and what I have seen.
Maybe because market research doesn't need a special license/degree like lawyers need or maybe because demand research looks easy to newbie from a distance, people think they can do it themselves. Most can't, and it's usually hubris to think you can or survivorship bias from startups that pulled it off. It will cost you in the vast majority of cases. There's always exceptions. Come visit NYC or Los Angeles and see the 10 million struggling arrogant writers who thought they could just write a successful movie script or book right away and didn't realize that professional experienced writers have skills they do not. Look into the "flop rate" of new products from companies that hire a professional market researcher compared to startup failure rates and it's clear that incorrect or lack of research is often a major problem. Good luck and happy new year.