Every successful business was initially just an idea. In fact, when looking at any successful business and product, you’ll notice that they all started with an idea. Mark Zuckerberg for example, one day came up with the idea of creating a website for Harvard students where they could play the “hot or not” game. This idea alone became a multi-billion dollar business now known as “Facebook”. The founder of the very successful online shoe retailer Zappos, Nick Swinmurn, came up with the idea of selling shoes online after being unable to find the shoes he was after. Zappos is now a billion dollar company.
And the list goes on and on.
Since every successful business starts with an idea, below are 7 ways you can brainstorm potential million dollar ideas you can launch using webinars.
1) Leverage your personal experience
Often times, good business ideas come from personal experience, something that you’ve seen, something that frustrates you, something you can’t find but really want or something you want to improve. If this is the case, this could be the beginning of a million dollar idea, as chances are, you are not the only one in the world looking for that particular solution or experiencing that particular challenge. For example, the social media marketing agency we launched back in 2012 started after we experienced how time consuming social media marketing was for businesses and how social media automation software simply couldn’t do the work as well as a human would.
2) Perform keyword research
Another fantastic way to come up with potential million dollar business ideas is by looking at what people are currently looking for online. Keyword research tools such as Google’s keyword search tool makes that job very easy. Simply type in any topic, as generic or as specific as you want, and you’ll discover how many people in the world or in a particular country are looking for this keyword (or related keywords) every month. This will allow you to discover the sea of opportunities there are and what the current market wants. Plus, this keyword tool will tell you how much competition there is online for these specific keywords, allowing you to see if advertisers are spending money to target people searching for these keywords. The more people are bidding for these keywords, the more likely these keywords are producing revenue and the more promising it is for you.
3) Perform online research
Tapping into the power of websites such as Facebook, Amazon and Youtube is also a great way to come up with million dollar ideas. On Facebook, you can type in any keyword in their search engine, and you will find a list of all groups and pages relevant to your keyword. When you dig deeper, you’ll be able to look at conversations from people in that target market and find out their frustrations, needs and wants, which will help you come up with an idea. The same applies to Amazon where you can look for books and products relevant to your keyword and get ideas from customers’ product reviews. Youtube allows you to do the same, but with videos. Simply type in a keyword in Youtube’s search engine and look at the comments from some of the most popular videos relevant to that keyword.
4) Leverage your skills
Great ideas can also come from your own skills. If you have developed over the years a particular skill or system that helps you achieve a certain result faster, chances are this can be turned into a million dollar product. For example, you could be a sales person who over the years has discovered a faster way to close sales that not many people use or know about. This technique which you most probably take for granted by now can be the beginning of a very lucrative business.
5) Remain up-to-date with the latest news
Sometimes, watching the news on television, reading your Twitter newsfeed or reading the newspaper can lead to a million dollar idea. In fact, this is how the founder of “Sort My Money”, a personal budgeting service came up with the idea. One day, the founder David Rankin was reading an article about budgeting when he realised that no one was actually helping people on how to manage the day-to-day finances, and that this gap in the market was a huge business opportunity.
6) Leverage existing products
Another way to come up with a million dollar idea is by looking at existing products or services. If there are products you currently use that could do with some improvement or could be simplified, then this could potentially be a very good idea. I came up with the idea of creating a webinar replay software for example, after seeing many software products that were simply too complex, with way too many options and confusing, especially for beginners. Our software “Webinator” which has sold thousands of copies, is just a simplified version of webinar replay softwares. The soft drink “7Up” for example, came into existing as an alternative to Cola by removing the caffeine element of Colas. The simple process of altering existing products is one of the best ways to come up with a million dollar idea and there are many very successful businesses out there who came into existing just by following this process.
7) Look abroad
Travelling to other places is also a good way to come up with million dollar ideas. By discovering new products and services in other countries which are not yet available in yours is a good way to come up with a million dollar idea. There could be existing products and services doing really well in other countries which could do just as well where you live, but haven’t been imported or modelled. For example, when the weight loss HCG drops were first introduced in America and heavily marketed by Dr Oz on his television show, many entrepreneurs around the world started very successful weight loss businesses from selling these drops in their country.
