How to know if there is demand for my service

[Tom Stotes]

Hello everyone, I'm Tom. Just joined the forum, having read the Fastlane.

I have a question about my business idea. I believe it fits all or most of the CENTS framework, but my fear is simple: is there demand?

For context, I am a freelance English teacher (English as a second language).
Recently I have been trying to sell 'premium' level English communication skills courses to freelancers for whom English is not their first language.
They can potentially earn significantly more money by improving those skills and working with more UK/US clients.

In other words: I want to help them to become more successful freelancers, and I know I have the skills to do it.

The problem is that a lot of freelancers particularly in 'poorer' countries don't have a lot of expendable income. I was trying to sell a $1000 course to people who earn $500 a month, so I wasn't having much success.

The book made me think that a much better way would be to offer a service that impacted a lot more people but for a much more affordable cost, and would also give me unlimited leverage as it would not be reliant on my direct hours with my students.

My idea:
A membership / subscription business with exclusive content, video courses, and so on.

I have learned, through my connections on LinkedIn and research that plenty of freelancers know how important English communication skills are. So I really do have a good feeling that this is a potentially good business. I also know that while there are people who coach freelancers, there is no one really focussing on non-native English freelancers. It's also a potentially huge market, 15 million freelancers in India, 30 million in Indonesia alone.

However when I do keyword research for specific keywords the avg search numbers are pretty low which makes me wonder if there is not really any demand for this.

So, my question is: Do I need to worry that specific keywords have low search volume? How can I know if there really is a demand for my business that is not just my 'feeling' and personal contact with people? Especially considering my business model is about hitting high scale.

Thanks so much for any advice on this.

 

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[AnonGuest093]

Hello everyone, I'm Tom. Just joined the forum, having read the Fastlane.

I have a question about my business idea. I believe it fits all or most of the CENTS framework, but my fear is simple: is there demand?

For context, I am a freelance English teacher (English as a second language).
Recently I have been trying to sell 'premium' level English communication skills courses to freelancers for whom English is not their first language.
They can potentially earn significantly more money by improving those skills and working with more UK/US clients.

In other words: I want to help them to become more successful freelancers, and I know I have the skills to do it.

The problem is that a lot of freelancers particularly in 'poorer' countries don't have a lot of expendable income. I was trying to sell a $1000 course to people who earn $500 a month, so I wasn't having much success.

The book made me think that a much better way would be to offer a service that impacted a lot more people but for a much more affordable cost, and would also give me unlimited leverage as it would not be reliant on my direct hours with my students.

My idea:
A membership / subscription business with exclusive content, video courses, and so on.

I have learned, through my connections on LinkedIn and research that plenty of freelancers know how important English communication skills are. So I really do have a good feeling that this is a potentially good business. I also know that while there are people who coach freelancers, there is no one really focussing on non-native English freelancers. It's also a potentially huge market, 15 million freelancers in India, 30 million in Indonesia alone.

However when I do keyword research for specific keywords the avg search numbers are pretty low which makes me wonder if there is not really any demand for this.

So, my question is: Do I need to worry that specific keywords have low search volume? How can I know if there really is a demand for my business that is not just my 'feeling' and personal contact with people? Especially considering my business model is about hitting high scale.

Thanks so much for any advice on this.

I'm not going to pretend like I know anything. But I've read enough from other folks on here to know that you're gonna get a recommendation to run facebook ads at your target audience leading to a Gumroad or something similar.

I think you could know if the idea has legs in about a weekend and for some reasonable ad $$ if you already have the content made up. Just work on some solid copy for the landing page and see what you can do.

 

[Andy Black]

Do I need to worry that specific keywords have low search volume?

Load them and see? They're just estimates, and they're for the exact match keyword/ search term (meaning there's going to be other related searches).