This is one of the first genuinely original ideas that I have seen in a long time. You can create a site, use AdSense to drive traffic to it to see if your idea has merit.
This one little additional step lets you actually get into conversation with people visiting your site before you launch is very much lean startup.
Now as a developer building the product I can hear the objection you won't be able to get the product built if you keep getting interrupted. But you may be building the wrong thing. So this makes a lot of sense to me.
> You can create a site, use AdSense to drive traffic to it to see if your idea has merit
I started a number of sites like that years ago in college, with nothing but a static site built with a cheap template in a day, and some AdWords credits. If people actually signed up to learn more, or ordered a product, or whatever, then I'd spend the time building a real business around it.
The first time I saw that written down was in Four Hour Workweek several years ago. Now millions of people have been told to do the same.
We tried to build functionality as fast as users were requesting it. It seems like the AdSense approach will turn a lot of folks off once they realize it's only a landing page. Clearly valuable in determining if an idea backed by marketing can get traction.
But, how do you convince those AdSense users to share their true problems (or do you just target a really specific keyword niche) before they bounce?
It seems like the AdSense approach will turn a lot of folks off once they realize it's only a landing page.
I'm not a big fan of AdSense smoke testing, but if you're going to do it, you can fairly trivially raise perceived value above "landing page." Offer an immediate incentive for giving their email address.
For example, if you're going to offer software to automate X but haven't built it yet, offer to give people their own personal copy of your guide to X-ing (written by an X-ing expert). Just put in the email address we should send it to. P.S. Want to hear about our thoughts on X every week or two? Make with the clicky-clicky.
I know it's not the best of 'business books' but "The 4 Hour Work Week" has a great section on doing just this - I found it really useful in thinking about the very start of a MVP.
This one little additional step lets you actually get into conversation with people visiting your site before you launch is very much lean startup.
Now as a developer building the product I can hear the objection you won't be able to get the product built if you keep getting interrupted. But you may be building the wrong thing. So this makes a lot of sense to me.