Validate it before you build it
People will say an idea sounds useful and then not buy it. The only signal that settles the question involves somebody parting with money first.
The failure mode here is specific and common: three months of building, a launch to an audience that does not exist, and a conclusion that digital products do not work. The building was never the risk. Nobody wanting it was.
Validation for a digital product is not a survey. People will tell you an idea sounds useful and then not buy it, because answering a question costs nothing and buying costs money. The only reliable signal involves somebody parting with something.
The signals, weakest to strongest
- People say it sounds good. Worth almost nothing. Encouraging people is normal behaviour.
- People ask when it is ready. Better, because they imagined using it.
- People give you an email address to hear about it. Real, but cheap, and the gap between a list and a sale is wide.
- People pay before it exists. This is the only signal that settles the question.
Selling it before you make it
Pre-selling feels uncomfortable and is the single most useful thing in this article. Describe the product precisely, say honestly that it does not exist yet, give a date, and take money with a promise to refund anyone who changes their mind.
What that actually looks like, written out. A message of six lines: what the product is and who it is for; the specific outcome it produces; what is in it, as a list; the date it will be delivered; the price, with a note that it rises afterwards because these buyers are taking a risk; and a plain sentence saying it is not built yet and that anyone can have their money back at any point before delivery, no questions.
If ten people buy, you now have a product worth building, ten people whose expectations you can ask about directly, and the money to spend on it. If nobody buys, you have saved three months and learned something specific: not that the idea was bad, but that this description of it, at this price, to these people, did not move anyone.
Two buyers is the awkward result and the most common one. It is not a yes and not a no. What it usually means is that the thing has a buyer and the description or the audience is too narrow a funnel, so the next step is the same offer to a different group of people rather than a different product.
If you cannot pre-sell yet
Sometimes you have nobody to pre-sell to, which is itself the finding. Two cheaper substitutes, both weaker, both better than building blind.
- Do it manually for one person, for money. If your product is a system, run the system by hand for one client. You will learn what the product actually needs and get paid to find out.
- Make the smallest piece and sell that. One template rather than the suite. If the small thing sells, the large thing has a buyer.
The manual route is worth doing even when you could pre-sell, because of what it produces. Run your process by hand for one paying client and you finish with the real sequence of steps, the places where a buyer would get stuck, the questions they asked, their words for the problem, and a before and after you can show. That is most of the product and all of the sales page, bought with one client's fee.
Both routes have the same shape: find out whether money moves before committing months. The cost of being wrong drops from a quarter of a year to a week.
Work to do
- Write the sales description of the product as if it existed, including the price and what the buyer gets.
- Put it in front of the people most likely to want it and ask for the money, saying plainly that it is not built yet and when it will be.
- Decide in advance what number of pre-sales means build it, and what number means take the same offer to different people.
- If you cannot reach ten such people, stop and work out where they are. That is now the project, not the product.