Ways to Measure the Existing Market for a Product or Service

  1. Create a sham version of your product or service. Put it on eBay. Record the results
  2. Post ads on local Craigslist sites leading to a product-specific inbox. Record your replies, create a mailing list.
  3. Peruse industry magazines for small-time ads of similar products
  4. Run an ad in an industry-specific magazine, create a mailing list from responses. Use a free Google Voice number.
  5. Hire folks on Mechanical Turk to do market research by scouring message boards. Distinguish your best performers, pay them more and boot the rest.
  6. Build a simple contact form web site for your product. Try a few different AdWords ads, measure the results and adjust ads accordingly.
  7. Using your simple (and ambiguous) contact form web site, make a few different AdWords ads for similar products. Go with whichever one garners the most traffic.
  8. As 6 & 7 but with Facebook

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