Gaze into my crystal ball and I will tell you if your business will be successful...

You have a great idea for a business.  Since most new businesses fail, wouldn't you like to know for sure if YOUR business idea would work BEFORE you spend $1,000s of dollars and hundreds of hours on it?

Now you can find out if your business will be successful with some very inexpensive testing techniques.

Here are some ways to inexpensively test a new product or service idea and possibly make money while doing it.

Testing Method #1 for Services and Products

Step 1 – Create a free or inexpensive e-book, special report or “how-to” guide that deals with your topic and would be of interest to target market you would try to reach.

Step 2 – Create a simple online form where people can sign up for free item.

Step 3 - Promote this free item through a variety of methods including Search Engine Advertising, Instant Buzz and/or Online Communities.  Use an ad tracking service like Marketers Choice so you can tell if your advertising works.

Step 4 – Analyze results.  If there is no interest, perhaps your idea is not viable.  If you had good interest from this test, people you already connected with an interested group of prospects who are now on your subscriber list and can provide testimonials to use in your marketing.  Talk with people who signed up to find out what they thought and what additional needs they have.

This is a great way to test an idea while connecting with people who will be your eventual customers.

Testing Method # 2 for Services and Products

Step 1 – Sign up for an affiliate program for a similar, good quality product like yours that reaches same target market you plan on working with.

Success and wealth are crazy things. You must first give something away for them to be obtained. It is like planting a seed. You must give away or plant that seed before it grows and multiples This sounds absolutely crazy. Most people think how can I have wealth and success if I give away little that I have? After all I don't have much, therefore I must hang on to it if I ever want to have something.

Here's what truly successful have found out - they only achieved enormous success after they learned to give even more of themselves. The more they gave more they received back. This is philosophy too many people have and it is philosophy of those who remain poor. For two much of my own life I had this philosophy. Most people can't be blamed for having this way of thinking, as secrets of success aren't typically taught. They must be sought out.

First we must understand what wealth is, wealth is not money. Money is only paper. Ask a guy stranded on a desert island with 50 million dollars how much that money is worth. Not very much. Material wealth is only items we can purchase with that money - cars, TV's, vacations, houses, you get idea. So in this frame something of value (the car for example) must be produced for us to be able to use it. Thus more value that a person can produce (cars, TV's, computers, even information and time) more valuable you become.

Think of it this way, if you were only person who could do a very valuable task that many people wanted how wealthy would you be? Extremely to say least. But that is all just background information.

Here is why people have success backwards especially in area of sales and marketing. They mistakenly go about trying to sell their product or service, thinking people will want to buy from them. Instead of thinking how can I be of value to others. How can I give away my value so I receive even more in return.

Here is where it really gets crazy. We already said we must give away our value to others to obtain wealth, and more value we are able to give to others more wealth that will come back to us.

Think of it like this.

A doctor goes to school for many years to become a doctor. He gives countless hours of his time to you to learn to become a doctor. Many doctors will study/work 4000 hours per year times 10 years = 40,000 hours plus many hundreds of thousands of dollars in money spent on education. So when you go to doctor he has 40,000 hours invested in you in a sense, as you are only one he is dealing with at this time. For which he might charge you $100. Even if you were to go to him for $40,000 worth of services in your lifetime where can you get this kind of value for $1 an hour and he even pays his own education cost out of his pocket. The same thing can be said of a famous athlete, or musician, or actor, etc. who spends countless thousands of hours of practice perfecting their craft before you spent $15 on a CD or bought a ticket, etc. from them.

Think of someone like Bill Gates and Microsoft. He sells you a computer operating system like Windows, which has literally thousand of hours of development time in it, to you for $129. What an incredible bargain this is, somebody spends millions of dollars and thousands of hours to develop a product that you want for which you get for only $129. What a steal.

The point is in all of these cases these people had vision of giving away their talents (isn't our wealth really what we have capability to earn with our talents), before they expected to receive anything in return. And yet in each of these cases more value they were able to give away to people more wealth they got back in return.

The Bible talks about principal of tithing. God says give me 10 percent of what you can do and I'll give you much more in return. God also says you can't out give him. I think he must see it as like a contest. He must be thinking, you think you are a big giver. "Check this out, look what I'm going to give you in return, try to top this."