This post is by Ivelin Demirov, an online entrepreneur and founder of River Cleaner.
For most people who use Kickstarter, getting their idea funded is like reaching the mountaintop.
They hit their goal. Their idea can now become a reality. Life is good.
But the truth is, this is just the start.
Having had numerous Kickstarter projects, nine to be exact, I learned through trial and error how to grow them well beyond the confines of Kickstarter. I’ll cover exactly how to do that in this post.
Or if you create private label products to sell on Amazon, you’ll learn a different approach to product development that begins with Kickstarter instead, and is potentially much more profitable.
Then, I’ll show you how to bring your product to even more platforms and build an email list out of former customers that will make it easy to go back to them again and again for greater profits.
Let’s begin with one of the most important steps to creating a product: market research.
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Kickstarter is the future of market research
Market research is an absolute requirement before developing any product or service.
If you skip this crucial step, you run a very good chance of ending up with an idea that no one wants to pay for. This very avoidable mistake could easily cost you thousands of dollars.
The problem with traditional market research
Market research is generally a pretty expensive, involved process:
- You have to research your industry and find out what kinds of problems there are.
- Then you need to come up with a possible solution for one of these problems.
- Next, you’ll want to make sure this solution doesn’t already exist or, if it does, figure out how you can compete with this alternative.
- At some point, you also have to figure out whether or not it’s worth the cost to produce your idea, which means finding out how much people will pay for it.
This is just a general outline. Whole companies exist to help their clients with each of these steps, and countless others.
The good news is that now, before you even create a product, you can test the market and see if people would be willing to pay for it.
Using Kickstarter for market research
With this approach you should still spend some time researching your industry, but it greatly reduces the time between this research and testing your product’s viability with the market.
If you can’t sell your idea on Kickstarter, chances are you won’t be able to sell it anywhere else. Kickstarter backers are willing to pay higher prices, are patient and forgiving, and are generous enough to spend time helping you in the process of creating something special.
Furthermore, to be frank, you don’t need to do nearly as much research because it’s not costing you very much to test your idea. Just go to Kickstarter, launch a campaign, post the link in Google+ and Reddit groups, and see what people have to say.
With traditional market research, people say they would buy something even though they have no intention to.The Kickstarter community will give you feedback on your idea, and it does this in two very important ways.
First, you can literally receive suggestions from your market. Potential buyers will say, “I like the idea, but I’d like it a lot more if you did x, y and z.” This is invaluable.
You can receive this kind of feedback through traditional market research strategies, but it will take a lot of work and a big budget.
The second type of feedback you get from Kickstarter addresses a very significant problem with traditional market research: people say they would buy something even though they have no intention to.
Maybe you’ve found this out the hard way.
Have you ever had a business idea that you told your family and friends about? Did they tell you that the idea was great, and they’d definitely pay for it? Then, after launching the business, did you find that their enthusiasm waned? All of a sudden, were they not so excited to hand over their money?
This isn’t completely their fault. They may have just been trying to be good friends. A lot of people were being completely honest with you, but when the time comes to actually spend money, their minds legitimately changed.
Herein lies a major challenge to traditional market research methods. When you don’t actually have to spend any money, it’s easy to claim you love an idea.
