Simply go to twitter.com/search, and search for:
"I hate"
"I wish there was"
"I need"
"Shut up take money"
"They should"
"Why isnt there a"
"There should be"
And other similar statements.
Five minutes of searching gave me this:
Now pick something and make it happen.
Now let me add on to this. How can you turn one of these ideas into a business?
Our example:
Market research:
Need?- Yes. A lot of smartphone owners use cases.
Entry?- Between product creation, marketing, and other expenses. It becomes evident that not just anybody can make a quality phone case easily.
Control?- You own the company and can distribute these cases on your own.
Scale/Magnitude?- 1.75 Billion smartphone users in the world and growing rapidly, most of which use cases and upgrade every few years. A quick search on Amazon shows best selling versions of the Otterbox selling for $40.
Time?- This can be automated through employees and computers.
Validation?- Yes. Examples are : Otterbox, LifeProof, etc.
How can you make the above products better?
•Exploit product weakness' - bad amazon reviews, internet complaints, etc.
•A better guarantee - Your selling point is protection against damage, after all.
•Better marketing - This is a big one, especially for this product. A few things that come to mind:
- Otterbox is a bad name for branding. The first time I heard someone brag about their Otterbox(Yet another plus about this niche), I couldn't tell if they we're saying alterbox or otherbox. It didn't turn out to be either. Create a brand that people brag to their friends about owning and is easy to remember.
- Market your sales funnel through different channels. Facebook is golden for this niche. Just target mobile users browsing with the specific phone your case is for, and split test demographic variables like crazy. This can be applied to many other mobile ad networks with similar targeting features. Once you have a funnel where for every X you spend in advertising results in Y in profit, and X<Y, Scale it up!
- Make your product attractive to distributors. Mall kiosks, eCommerce sites, Phone carrier stores, etc. Make it so that they want to move your product more than others.
•Create cases for phones that haven't been touched by the above companies. There are lots of phone models that have been ignored by the above companies.
There are tons of other ways you can improve on these products, these are only a few that came to mind.
How can you get started?
Take on each problem one at a time. Google is your best friend.
Research how to make it
Get it made
Market it
Incorporate
Focus on the important things
And then...
Hope this was useful.
-Matt