Ask HN: Commercial viability testing?
I'm working on a web based service that helps make purchase decisions. The service can potentially apply to any kind of purchase (ex. car, electronics, wine, etc). However I'd like to know its commercial viability of before I do too much work.
So I've been thinking a lot about how to validate this idea. Friends get excited about it, but that's expected. I rejected surveys because of the biases involved (randoms expressing interest != real customers buying).
My current approach is to try the idea in a small market (say, digital pianos) with a barely working prototype, just to test interest and conversion. So I've picked an SEO friendly market. Now I'm nearly finished on a minimally-functional MVP. My plan is to do some traditional (white hat) SEO stuff to get some traffic flow, and then test some hypotheses on these real organic users to decide whether or not to proceed.
I'm curious what people from the HN community have to say about this approach, since it would probably involve me paying someone for SEO. Am I way off base or does the approach make sense?