By Neil Patel

Ever have a really great idea for a product?

You know, the kind of idea that makes you want to grab strangers by the shoulders and explain the whole thing in a rush. For the next few hours or even days, you find yourself revved up in high gear, eager to turn your big idea into reality.

It’s an awesome feeling.

There’s only one problem: what comes up must go down, and sometimes big ideas do just that – they flop, hard.

You could shrug it off and say that failure is really a learning experience, but wouldn’t you rather learn how to avoid those product flops so you can save yourself time, money, and heartache?

I know I would.

Here are seven warning signs your big product idea is about to flop — and seven ways to avoid landing with a splat:

1. You Keep Changing Your Mind

You’re burning through your project and you’re totally jazzed. Everything’s going great! It’s such an awesome idea.

But it would be even better if you add this one element.

Wait, no – maybe you should do this instead. That’d be awesome.

Or maybe you should change that – it would make your project even better! It’ll crush all of the products in the niche!

Sound familiar?

Business old-schoolers call it “scope change,” and it can seriously hamper your progress. The more you push the boundaries and keep adding to your project, the more it becomes a time-consuming, cost-heavy monster that never ends.

Risks go up, your schedule gets trashed, deadlines get blown and quality goes down.

The solution?

Give yourself a set amount of time to do research and plan the scope of your project before you start. Take a few days, weeks, or months to really think things through. It’s okay to waffle then because no one else is watching, and you don’t have to backtrack.

But once that time has expired, stop, make the decisions you need to make, and move forward. Look at it as a deadline. You can change your mind up until a certain day on the calendar, and then after that, you stick with the plan until you’re finished.

2. You Haven’t Figured Out the Price

Most people don’t bother to figure out what their business idea will cost them, not only in terms of money, but also time and opportunity costs. They just latch on, run with their idea, and work like mad for weeks, investing their time and money blindly.

Then six months after launch they wonder why they’re broke, exhausted, and feeling trapped.

Before you undertake a project, figure out what it’ll cost you:

• Overhead Costs: Will you need office space? Employees? Equipment? Will you have to pay travel expenses? What are the total hard costs?
• Salary Costs: What will you pay yourself? Even if you’re living on savings, it’s still an expense. Write it down.
• Opportunity Costs: What opportunities will you have to give up? How much will that cost you in both the short-term and long-term?
• Time Costs: When are you going to work on …read more

  Source:: Kiss Metrics Blog

        

  

  Author: Aaron