Qualify Your Business Niche: Ask these Four Questions Before You Develop Your Products or Services

Before you start developing products and services for your niche, you need to know whether this niche is worth pursuing. To find out, ask yourself these four questions and be sure to do the research you need to get the correct answers. Gut feelings don't count here ... you need cold, hard facts or you might spin your wheels going after a market that can't be profitable for you.

1. Is the target market large enough to sustain profitability?
If your target market is too small, there won't be enough buyers of your product or service. You can usually find this out by finding an organization, association or other group that your target market might belong to and uncover (at least in ball park figures) how big the membership is.

2. Is your target market hungry?
If you've chosen an apathetic market that doesn't care enough about the problem or desire you've uncovered to do something about it, they aren't going to buy your product or service. This one is more subjective, however a good rule of thumb is to find out if there are currently products and services available to this market. Also, if you can, find out if they are selling. Websites like Amazon and Clickbank can give you insight into this. If currently available products are selling, then you can be reasonably assured that the market is hungry.

3. Is your target market willing to pay enough for your product or service?
If it costs you $10 to produce your product, but your target market is only willing to pay $7 for it, you don't have a viable product. Since you found some products and services when answered question 2, how much are they charging? Do you see any pricing trends?

4. Do you have access to your target market?
Is there a place where members of your target market congregate? If not, it might be difficult to get your message to them. If you were able to find an organization, association or other group that your target market belongs to, will they let you contact their membership? Is there a publication that your target market reads that you could advertise in? Is there a list of members of your target market that you can rent or purchase? Is there an active online forum you can join and participate in?

If the answers to these questions turned up a big dud, be thankful that you didn't put a lot of work into a product or service for that market. It cost you a lot less to do this research before development, than it would if you had a product you couldn't move.