

Ask HN: How do you determine market potential? - jeer

Howdy HN,<p>I have an idea for a web application that seems suited to a subscription based revenue model. There are already a small handful of similar products but they all look really pathetic with the exception of maybe two which fall squarely into the marginal category.<p>I believe I can implement my idea well enough that it puts the other services to shame but I worry that the lack and shoddy look of the existing services might indicate a near non-existent market potential. Or, maybe a market that's just very difficult to get any traction in.<p>How can I test the market? Are there ways to get an idea of how much traffic or how many customers these other service might have (there's nothing listed on the sites)? I've heard people talk about using Google AdWords to test for market interest but I've also heard that there's a learning curve to figuring out how to effectively use AdWords. Any ideas?<p>Regards<p>--update--
For anyone interested, I did find this:<p>Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step<p>http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demand-for-your.html
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jacquesm
Those other people that are doing this right now in their crappy way in a
sense already validate your market.

Can you figure out how large they are (alexa, compete), can you make a stab at
their conversion rates ? That should give you (with some room for error) an
idea of turnover at a given size. Then look at how long they've been doing it,
that will give you an idea of the 'runway' you'll need to get to that level
(or any intermediate level).

hth

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jeer
Thanks. I hadn't considered using the age of these other services as any sort
of indicator.

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jacquesm
Conversion rate is the hard one to estimate, you could easily be off by an
order of magnitude or more.

