How can you be sure you won’t waste time creating a product that no one wants?

How can you be sure your idea will be a winner?

Before putting all the time and effort into creating a product and then marketing it - and then hoping people want to buy it, you can do some simple, free and inexpensive tests to see if there is enough interest to proceed.

If your test proves unsuccessful, maybe you should move on to a different project. However after a successful test you will know that people want your product.

If your test proves successful you can feel confident that spending the time to create it will pay off in Spades.

Here are seven very easy free and inexpensive ways to test the viability of your idea:

1. Do some keyword research.

The most common way to do keyword research is by using tools like WordTracker, Nichbot, Keyword Discovery and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

These will give you an indication of how many people are searching for the type of information that you are thinking about creating a product on. The more people searching on your main keywords, the better.

2. Use the search engines.

Type your keywords into Google and see how many other people are selling similar products. Too much competition may be bad, but some competition is healthy - it tells you there must be a market for your idea. No competition might just be telling you that no market exists for your idea (hint: do more testing).

3. Visit forums and newsgroups on your topic.

See what people are asking. Does your product answer their problems?

4. Create a survey and ask your prospects if they are interested in your product.

Email your email list and ask them to fill out the survey.

5. If you do not have your own list, ask the owner of another list if they will send out the survey to their list.

Tell them you will give them a free copy of your product when it’s done.

6. Place some pay-per-click ads.

This is a very fast way to get results. Place some inexpensive ads on Google utilizing the keywords that target your product and point the ads to a simple one-page website or blog.

Your click through rate alone will give you some indication of interest. Even better, get your visitors to sign up to an email opt-in list by offering them a free tip sheet, article or check list related to your topic.

This can be a very simple to create by just utilizing some of the ideas you are considering in your main product. PPC advertising can be a very inexpensive test if you do not have too competitive of keywords and you can keep the cost lower by setting a budget for what you are willing to spend.

7. Test with eBay.

Place an inexpensive classified ad for your tip sheet and collect those email addresses with an opt-in form.

Remember we are talking about testing the market for an idea on a product that is yet to be created. The idea here is to not spend the time creating a product unless you get some good indication that there is enough interest to put the time into it.

To learn more marketing be sure to sign-up for my newsletter

The short answer is yes, no, maybe.

There are many naysayers such as friends and family that may tell you that making money online is some type of pipe dream. “If it’s that easy, everyone would do it” is a common saying for those with no will to try.

Try telling the millions of eBay sellers that it’s impossible to make money online. Many of these people are making a good part-time and even full-time living on eBay alone. Then there are millions of other web merchants selling any number of products of services online from their own websites and blogs.

My own experience has found both easy and hard ways to make money online.

I believe eBay is the easiest and fastest way to make money online - not the “best” way however, just the easiest. Take a photo, make a listing and upload the photo and in a few days to a week, more times than not an easy sale is made. Oh I have found some items that did not sell so well and others that sold extremely well. Finding products to sell is the hard part.

Specializing has worked well for me. I have a few selling accounts that specialize on different niches. I sell both high and low ticket items and I always make more money with the high ticket items, yet for some reason I also continue to sell low-priced items too. … Hmmm maybe I need to re-evaluate that one and focus on my more profitable items.

Selling info products such as ebooks and reports is probably the most touted way to make money online by perhaps the majority of the marketing gurus. There is definitely a hurdle here for the newbie at Internet selling, but it’s a small hurdle. There are so many reports and ebooks on how to sell reports and ebooks it would make your head spin to see the long list of them.

If you can’t write your own info product, there are many ghostwriters just waiting to write one for you on the cheap. Then there are private label rights where you can resell a book or report written by someone else and keep all the profit. Sometimes you can even brand it as your own if you have master rights to it.

The market is flooded with reports and eboooks, especially on the topic Internet Marketing. If I did not absolutelty love it, I would not write about this market. However I do write on other niche topics that also do real well for me (sorry not divulging at this point, I like un-saturated markets).

Promoting affiliate programs is extremely easy. I make a decent amount each month recommending other peoples products. It is a little more work than eBay because you have to develop a list and market your website more. Some clever people do well by promoting affiliate programs through article writing or videos.

The most sound method of making money online is to focus on a topic you like and par it down into a tight little niche whether you sell physical products, info products or promote affiliate programs.

Last I want to mention selling a service. Can you write? Design websites? Write scripts? Proofread? Graphic Design? These are just some of the services people need that turn to the web to find someone to do it for them.

Go to Elance.com where people post what services they need and start replying to them. Build-up your references, do good work. The more good references you have the more you will be able to get for your services.

I used to design websites for other people which was very easy money for me, now there are others that can do it much faster and better than me as I have focused on selling products online over the past few years.

One thing is for certain; you won’t make money online without taking action. So get off your duff and take action. Take one step at a time and I guarantee you can make money online too.

Easy and Fast is the motto I have a bunch of free tools I will be sharing with you to help you make money online. I will also be posting some information about advertising and marketing methods as well as product and website development.