How to Find an Audience. A Summary.

A while back I summarized Arvid Kahl's strategy for finding an audience for your side business and I wanted to share it here with you. I actually think it doesn't just find you an audience, but actually a product, but that is for you to decide. Original article: https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/finding-an-audience-for-your-side-business/ My twitter version of the summary: https://twitter.com/0xCaponte/status/1687158970077548550 Summary: 1- Finding Possible Audiences 🎨 -------------------------------------- Ask yourself: what groups, tribes, or professions do you, your family or friends relate to? What things do you use, how, and who else uses them? For example: developers, aquarium owners, car fans, indie hacker, etc. What you need to do: List each audience you can relate to. 2- Affinity 💞 Can you be with them in the long run? ----------------------------------------------------------- As you are going to build something for them, you will need to spend a lot of time with them. Is that something that you can do for a while? For example: if you find influencer fake and shallow, building social network or social media tools is probably not a good idea. Ask yourself: Do they need help? Deserve success? Engage in meaningful activities? Will you benefit from diving into their activities and investing your time in them? What you need to do: create a set of questions like the one above and ask them consistently to all your possible audiences. Be consistent and avoid a bias, answer each from 0-10 and average them to get the final value. 3- Your Interests 🧩 Do they have interesting problems? -------------------------------------------------------- If you are engaged in what you are doing, your project has a better chance, so it is better to work in things you enjoy directly or indirectly. Ask yourself: What are their pain points? What solutions exist or don't? What were you expecting to find but didn't? Why is it not there? What you need to do: go to where they gather, websites, forums, social media, literature, etc. Spend 1-2 hours per audience and rank by opportunity from 0-10. Note their main problems/pain points in another sheet for future reference, you will probably end up solving one of them. 4- Profitability 💰 Are they willing to pay? ------------------------------------------------ You can have the best solution, but if people can't or won't pay for it, what you have is a side project and not a business. Ask yourself: Do they love free stuff? Is the problem painful enough to pay for solutions? Disposable income? How much could they pay? Can they decide themselves, or they need approval? What you need to do: based on the time you spent researching your audiences, rank them from 0-10 based on payment potential. 5- Market Size 📊 --------------------- Unless your solution is very expensive, you will need more than a couple clients. Ask yourself: How large is the community? Are there public registers/associations you can check? Is it suitable for your business? What you need to do: from 0-10 rank each based on their size and your goals. Aim for a niche that is not too big for a big player to come in and kick you out, but big enough to sustain a business. 🥇Finally🥇 -------------- - Add all points for each audience and sort them so you can see your "best fits". - Take a deeper dive into your top and choose the one you want to work on. - Look at 4 & 5 together based on your goals. An audience's value changes if you aim for 10K or 50K in MRR.