How do you know when you can compete with something that already exists?
How do you know when you can compete with something that already exists?
I got excited for an idea I had over the weekend (a site with costs down to the penny of different recipes for poor people like me that don't want ramen every day) and started building something without performing my usual first step: get online and check out all the people who had the nerve to steal my idea before I even thought of it! Of course it exists, and some (BudgetBytes for example) I think are better than my ideal vision was.
What do you look for when deciding if there's room for your product? Has anything surprised you when you went through with an idea that was already well executed by somebody else?
This happens to every single person on this website! Here is my thinking: If you didn't know that such a thing existed, then THATS your market right there!
Just because a product already exists doesn't mean it is getting in front of the right people so I would just go ahead with an MVP as long as you have a smart way of marketing it.
If you didn't know that such a thing existed, then THATS your market right there!
This is brilliant.
"Of course it exists, and some (BudgetBytes for example) I think are better than my ideal vision was"
Not all ideas should be turned into passion projects or businesses. If you don't truly believe that you can do something better than solutions that already exist, let this one drop and wait for the next idea.
Is the question better phrased: Is there room in the economic side of this market? i.e. can I sufficiently monetize this despite the competition to remain viable? I would start working through the business model of the idea, and seeing what metrics you would need to hit in order to make it worth your time. Is it ad revenue? how much traffic do you need? what are the traffic numbers like on your competitors? are there supplementary products that budgetbytes doesn't offer or that you'd want that could be higher margin?
what were you searching for that they aren't addressing (keywords?) or where were you searching that they weren't filling that marketing void?
All great things to consider, thanks Brian!
Any project you launch, once it lives in the wild for a while, will be different than the germ of an idea that it came from. Start with the idea and grow it organically- who knows what you'll end-up with? :)
You have to know that you can offer something that your competitors do not, that the market wants.