Two Methods Entrepreneurs Used to Test Their Ideas

Conducting a market test is the best solution to uncertainty about the feasibility of your business concept. If you think this will cost too much money, then think again. Here are three anonymous but very real entrepreneurs who tested each of their ideas for around $50.

Our first wise business founders created the idea of selling medical scrubs with an online store for this health industry apparel. The two entrepreneurs started by creating a survey for their target market. There are websites that manage the responses to such tests. Although there are free versions, the future startup chose to pay $20 for an upgrade that allows for more questions and intake of extra responses.

The survey was emailed to acquaintances that work in hospitals and referrals received from those contacts. In addition, requests were made of nursing programs and medical schools to send the survey to students. Participants in the survey were given incentive to respond by receiving entry into a random drawing for free scrubs. As a result, more than 1,500 responses were received.

This gave our budding entrepreneurs better information about their market size in order to scale their website. They incorporated and launched their venture. Revenue this year is expected to exceed $100,000. The total cost of the market test was $54.50 including the survey cost and four pairs of scrubs. The only additional investment was design and development of the website. That cost was easily recovered in the first year of operation.

The second entrepreneurial venture involves someone who developed several business ideas. She decided to test all of them. Her first step was offering a $100 coupon through Google AdWords. This is a pay-per-click advertising service. Our entrepreneur is obligated to pay Google whenever someone clicks on her coupon ad that Google places on various websites.

The ambitious business founder paid $100 to have professional advertising created. She then downloaded free website templates for commercial use and created four sites offering different services. This required four domain name registrations and site hosting fees.

Activity for all the sites was tracked using free Google Analytics software. One of the websites attracted a sufficient amount of traffic for viability as a profitable business. A new corporation was born and our entrepreneur expects revenues this year of $120,000. The total cost for the testing was $177.76 – including the three websites that she discarded.