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How can I tell if my business idea is valuable?

I want to start a blog about interiors and home styling (high end) and then have an ecommerce store selling items mentioned in the blog. Later on, I want to have a sort of booking marketplace to book travel design experiences. 1. Is this a viable business idea? 2. Should I position it as a blog, an ecommerce site or travel?

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Answers

Assaf Ben-David

Mentor, Entrepreneur, Lawyer, Public Speaker

1. It's a nice idea - very similar to Houzz and a few other existing platforms - so you would need to find more of a niche. In order to tell you if it's viable, I/you would need to know how you intend on bringing traffic, what your conversion rate will be (visitor to buyer), how much it costs you to bring each transactions/buyer, how many transactions you'll have per day/month and how much each transaction is worth.
I can help you with all of the above if you need.
2. E-commerce site

I've successfully helped over 300 entrepreneurs, startups and businesses, and I would be happy to help you. After scheduling a call, please send me some background information so that I can prepare in advance - thus giving you maximum value for your money. Take a look at the great reviews I’ve received: https://clarity.fm/assafben-david

Good luck

Answered almost 5 years ago

IRADUKUNDA Delphin

I am a medicall student and teach lessons online

1)Is it viable,of course because I think I might use the services some day.
2)well about if you should make it also e-commerce I am in love with the idea because I heard that you make a blog about good interiors so if someone likes the interiors finding a way to buy them through the blog would prevent him/her researching the world for the furniture s/he liked
Making more profit to your business since the e-commerce pays too.
Hope I was helpful get in touch
Thank you

Answered almost 5 years ago

Marcio Galli

Technology-based startup founder

Hello there,

I was going to say that I didn't find the idea interesting. But then, when I read Assaf's comment, and specifically when I have visited the provided example, of https://www.houzz.com, I was like "wow, interesting".

I wanted to start my answer with this duality to show a key challenge for you. That when you put the building blocks like you did, for example saying "a blog that sells items" you run the risk of others imagining things that can be very poor; and you could stumble in people that don't understand or think in something completely different from what you perhaps have envisioned.

Perhaps another way for you to explore your idea development phase is to ask less to others about your idea if the idea is defined in a limited fashion, like the above example.

And to move to the feedback collection phase when you have a more developed story. I recommend to you to consider tools like the Business Model Canvas but be careful to not fall in doing the process thinking that the doing of the process is actually working for you. Tools like the Business Model Canvas, or other process for design and discovery, are just lean-oriented tools — they don't move forward exactly, they are intended to learning with iteration model.

If you move forward with these lean methods, try to come up with a number of variations of business models for your ideas and remember that each of them are not final. For all models that you come up you may eventually pivot/change them as you iterate and learn, with feedback from experts-in-the-field, customers, etc.

I am pointing one direction, or thread, but keep in mind that this process involves lots of "triangulation" with other parallel studies. For example, studying the market, competition, trends etc.

One other thing to keep in mind is to go look for the customer needs — there are a number of Jobs-to-be-done articles and frameworks that are going to give you some rigor to keep the customer job/need story(ries) tied to your plan.

I covered some process to start moving but don't think that there is a formula here. Think that all lean methods for idea creation, discovery, and validation; are in fact learning iteration tools. Good luck.

Answered almost 5 years ago

Bob Schwartz

Building Great Companies! Enabling Others Success

Easy - start upside down... your last value proposition point is something that you could easily do and is interesting to penetrate today noisy world -> travel design experiences.

In todays wickedly noisy world, you need to execute with quality BUT THAT IS NOT ENOUGH - you need to DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY ... you need a 'tip of the spear' message /brand to pierce the noise of the market.
* travel design experiences* this is interesting and you could easily make this happen and create a site and sell limited availability to fun and well planned unique access all around 'design' - it could be obvious or just mind opening creative events/places etc (Go to X city, and meet w ABC design experts, and see XYZ museum or artist or fashion person and show rooms and ...)

And with THAT brand "travel design experiences" you then would be able to create really cool content for a blog and IG and perhaps sell items you find along the way (or host a marketplace).

Start Here -> "travel design experiences"
easy, fun, low cost and commitment and informs all the rest....
Bob

PS: "Think like a Challenger" to break thru the noise.. if im not clear enough above you can watch me scream about this in this 1 minute video I did for Wpromote (we built it from 50 to 475 people top performance marketing agency - all around 'thinking like a challenger')
Wp Challenger 1 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFYrCE9coCY

Answered almost 5 years ago