Prove Somebody Wants It Before You Build It

The Exit Strategy — Substack’s own calculator says a fifty-thousand-subscriber list costs its writer close to eighty grand a year in fees, and that number doesn’t count what you lose if you ever try to leave. Long read on why renting your audience is the real business risk, and what building somewhere you own instead actually looks like.

Mike Searles, Overlooked Puddles — Searles built a whole method around finding the profitable idea every other creator already stepped over without noticing. Pairs clean with today’s drill: find the puddle, then go prove somebody actually wants to jump in it before you dig it any deeper. (Affiliate link, the building takes a cut.)

The 72-Hour Demand Test

Before you spend one hour building it, make five strangers put money or their name on the line.

Most dead products die the same way. Somebody falls for the build before a single stranger says they want it, then spends a month making a thing nobody asked for. Here’s the fix, and it takes three days, not three weeks.

1 // Write the sales page first

Not the product. The page that sells the product. Headline, three bullets on what’s inside, one button. If you can’t sell it on one screen before it exists, you don’t have an offer yet. You have a hobby.

2 // Put a real button on it

Buy now if you can charge today, wait-list if you can’t. Either way it costs the visitor something: money, or their name and a real reason to want the update. A page with no action on it is just a mood board, not a test.

3 // Set the bar at five, the clock at 72 hours

Five actual pre-orders or wait-list signups in 72 hours. Not likes, not “interesting!” comments. Five people willing to act. Small number on purpose. Big enough to mean something, small enough you’ll actually run the test instead of finding reasons to skip it.

4 // Go, or don’t

Clears five in 72 hours, you build. Doesn’t, you shelve it and go find the next idea. No mourning period. The page costs you nothing sitting there either way, and plenty of ideas that fail this test come back around later once the timing’s right.

My own shelf is shorter than my idea list for exactly this reason. Most of what’s in my head stayed in my head because it skipped this step. Five yes votes first is the test working, and the only real failure is skipping the test.

Run it this week? Hit reply and tell me what you tested and whether it cleared the bar. ~ J.D.