Module 1: Pick a Profitable Idea

Validating your idea

Once you have your profitable idea, your transformation, and your target audience, let’s check them out to see how well they’ll fit as digital membership products.

It’s important to validate your idea to ensure that there’s interest and demand for it before you spend time developing all the content around it.

There’s a common framework for doing this. It includes searching, listening, asking, and testing.

Searching

First, you’ll do a quick search to see what exists on your topic. Is there already a course on exactly the topic you’re looking to create? And if so, are there any clear ways you could differentiate yours? Do you notice a gap in information you can help fill?

Another useful purpose of the search phase is to determine what other people are actually searching for. Just start to type in your topic keywords in Google and note the top related searches Google suggests for you. These are real search queries many people are using. Which means, they are looking for this content

Listening

Next, validate by listening to what people are saying about your topic and your membership idea. You could take a look at a forum that discusses your topic. Maybe you’re part of a real-life group on this topic area and can listen to what other group members are saying, what needs and interests they have.

Asking

It’s also a great idea to ask your target audience. If you already own a business and have an existing audience, do a survey, poll or ask them directly what they would like more help with, or if it would be useful to receive a more advanced training on XYZ.

Testing

And finally, testing is a great way to validate your idea by seeing how your audience engages with and responds to sample content. For example, if you have a blog, you could share a blog post on the topic you’re thinking to create a membership product around, and see what the response is. Or, you could develop a freebie opt-in gift like an intro training or how-to guide as a teaser of your membership content and see if that resonates with people and they’re interested in receiving it.

By taking just a couple hours to validate your idea, you can move forward with confidence that an interest in and a need for your membership does exist — or, you may learn some key information that helps you modify your idea into something that will ultimately be more successful and profitable.

Use the validating worksheet to take notes on your findings and then use the validation checklist to confirm that your membership idea is something that there is interest in, there is a need for, and people would like to receive it from you — this gives you the green light that you’re ready to move forward.

Troubleshooting

Now, there are a couple scenarios that tend to worry people in this phase:

1. Your idea is already “taken.”
Somebody else created an awesome and successful course on it, or a bunch of ebooks turned up in your search. This is not inherently a bad thing that means you can’t proceed. It’s actually great to see that there is interest that sustains these other products. What you need to do is determine how your product will be differentiated from what already exists. Will you be sharing similar information, but to a different audience? Do you have a unique perspective to share? Do you have a different process for achieving the same result?

2. The second concern is that nothing exists on your topic.
You can’t find existing resources on it. This could mean a couple things: one, if there were a lot of questions about your topic but not many good answers, that’s a sign that there is demand for your idea, it just hasn’t been created yet (so that’s great news for you!). Or, if you’re not finding even any questions regarding your topic, that could mean that there’s not really a demand for it. If your validation was only online, it may also mean that your audience isn’t online. Now that’s something that’s possibly a red flag if you’re creating a digital product — because you’ll need to find customers online to purchase the product.

As you go through the validation process, if you’re not receiving validation that your membership idea is solid and people are dying to receive just that, then try going through the validation checklist with a few different topic ideas until you find one that feels like a clear path for you.

When you’ve found your profitable idea, not only will it check out during the validation process, but you’ll also feel confident in it, and excited to begin working on it — because you truly understand and believe in the value it provides. If you’re not feeling that, it may not be the best topic idea for you, and it may be a good idea to continue the brainstorming exercise.

So, once you have a profitable idea that’s been validated and you’re excited about, we’ll start bringing it to life!

Continue Module 1