How to Tell Whether Anyone Is Already Paying for Something Like This

A price you can find. A subscription page, a rate card, a quote on a marketplace, a package on a job board. Visible prices mean the transaction is normal, and normal is what you want when you're trying to build a business rather than start a movement.

Repeat payment counts more than one-off payment. Something people buy monthly, or buy again every project, or hire every season, is a habit. Habits are the difference between a business and a launch.

Workaround spending counts too. A person paying a teenager to do it, a company paying an agency to do it badly, a buyer paying for a tool they clearly hate. Resentful spending is still spending, and it's the most portable kind.

Start with the vendors who already serve the problem, including the ones everyone complains about. Their pricing pages tell you the going rate, and their one-star reviews tell you the opening. Both are free.

Then look at marketplaces and job boards for the task itself. If people post the job weekly, they're paying for the outcome already, and the price per posting is a public number you can build against.

Finally look sideways. Very often the money isn't in the category you assumed but in the thing next to it: the consultant who handles it, the spreadsheet template that sells, the course people buy when they get stuck. Adjacent payment is still payment.

Then you're selling a new behaviour, which is the hardest and slowest sale in business. Not impossible, but you should assume the market is far smaller than you hope until someone proves otherwise.

Check whether the problem is real but unfunded. Sometimes people have the pain and solve it by simply not caring, or by absorbing a loss they never itemise. Those markets can be opened, but not by a founder with no money and no patience.

Or check whether you've described the problem too narrowly. Nobody pays for "a tool to remind me to thank my referrers", but plenty pay for the wider thing that contains it. Widening by one step often reveals an existing budget.

Enough that the person you're targeting has a line item. Not a huge line, a real one: something they'd notice if it disappeared. That tells you there's a budget to compete for rather than a favour to ask.

Then check whether the payment is growing or shrinking. A market where people pay but are quietly cancelling is worse than one where people don't pay yet, because you'll inherit the same objection and have to argue with it forever.

And check the price ceiling. If the going rate is far below what your costs require, the answer isn't "we'll get volume". It's usually that you need a different customer, a bigger outcome, or a different problem.

No. It makes the demand question answered and the competition question harder. You'll be taking money from someone who already has it, which means you need a reason to switch that a tired incumbent hasn't already given.

That reason is usually a narrower customer or a better fit, not a lower price. Price wars are the one way to turn a healthy existing market into a bad idea for a new business.

The sweet spot is a market where money moves and the current answer is disliked. Disgruntled buyers are the cheapest customers in existence, because the persuasion is already done and they're waiting for a credible alternative.

Day one, write the problem in one sentence and find three businesses that claim to solve it. Note their prices. Day two, find five people who have the problem and ask what they paid last time. Days three to five, say your own price out loud to two of them.

Keep the notes in one place: what they pay, to whom, and what they hate about it. That three-column record is more useful than any market report, and it's the raw material for your offer.

Then have someone who owes you nothing look at it. A free pressure test reads the customer, the price, and the reach and gives you a verdict instead of encouragement, which is what you actually need before you spend a month building. Keep the record in My Tests.