How do you know what people want? After spending 24 hours in the mini-van with 4 kids, Justin is back from the Easter long-weekend and ready to update us on his progress on this week's project: "Marketing for Developers."

Project update

• You'd think that I would learn my lesson: in order to do these week-long sprints, plus record and edit this podcast, plus do my day job, I really can't have anything else on my plate. But, like an idiot, I scheduled this Season of the podcast while I was going to be away in Alberta on a 4 day road-trip.
• Not sure if I'm going to make the Thursday deadline, but I'm still hoping to make a serious dent in writing this book: Marketing for Developers.

Three ways to validate your product idea

1. Email 15 people in your niche and ask them if they'd pay for your product.

This is the approach that Rob Walling used when he validated his idea for Drip:

I emailed 17 SaaS owners that I know, and I said "I'm thinking about building this product: would you use this? Would you pay me for this?" And out of those 17, I got 11 people who said yes.2. Use a landing page with an email sign-up form

People giving you their email address is one proxy for gauging interest. This is what Nathan Barry did with his first book:

There's intention there. When you say "Sign-up to hear more about this book." The assumption there is that you're signing up because you want to buy it.3. Do a webinar

A third way to validate your idea comes from Brennan Dunn. He thinks that doing a live webinar is a great first step. It's way easier to do a webinar (and see if anyone's interested) than write a book, or create software.

Show notes

• Marketing for Developers
• Full interview with Rob Walling
• Full interview with Nathan Barry
• Full interview with Brennan Dunn
• Follow me on Twitter: @mijustin
• Rate and review the show
• Join the newsletter

Podcast hosting provided by Transistor.fm.

Update from 2021: A lot has happened since I recorded these episodes: I launched a podcast hosting company, Transistor.fm, with my friend Jon Buda! If you want to hear what I'm up to now go to transistor.fm/justin.