Ask HN: Teach me market research. What do you use for market research?

[rgovind]

I would like to be able to evaluate size of market and find out number of people who have the problem I wish to solve. How would you go about finding this information? For example, I want to write better mortgage calculators and make a webapp around lies real estate agents tell. It will be similar to bankrate.com. How do I go about finding how many people will click on my links and how much I will earn?

More generally, How do you decide what idea to pursue? I understand the "scratch your own itch" heuristic. But in my case, I have a few itches and I would like to go after them based on market potential.

[loumf]

For your specific problem:

http://www.zillow.com/research/data/

[rgovind → loumf]

Thanks. This is really valuable.

[Terr_]

I work for a market-research company which does this, but it's usually for other big companies.

Are you trying to estimate the size or your total possible consumer-base, or are you trying to sample a very small subset and ask them questions?

[rgovind → Terr_]

I am trying to estimate size of total possible consumer base. I believe this is same as Total Addressable Market.

[Terr_ → rgovind]

Hmm, sorry, that's a bit outside the intranet-app stuff I do. All I can think of is somehow getting the odds of those people from within a known demographic and multiplying... At the same time, it sounds like a kind of statistic which a lot of mortgage/realty places probably already know or track.

[avinassh]

well is there any company which does market research for your app? that would be nice!