In the context of startup companies, a proof of concept (POC) is a way for an entrepreneur to test the feasibility of their business idea and validate their assumptions about the market, customers, and competition.
A proof of concept is a demonstration that a certain concept or theory has the potential to be turned into a viable product or service. A POC can take many forms, including a prototype, a minimum viable product (MVP), or a simulation. It is used to gather feedback from potential customers, partners, or investors and make necessary adjustments before committing significant resources to develop the final product.
In the blogging world, doing a POC to discover if a new niche is worth a full-content site is something many publishers must do regularly if they want to work on multiple blogs and scale their publishing operations.
Here are three ways to do a proof-of-concept for a new blog niche you think has the potential to be profitable!
Launch the Blog on a Cheap Domain Name
You can test out the potential of your blog by simply launching it. A domain name costs around $10, a small investment to test out a new topic. Invest $30 per article by paying writers, and publish around 20 articles to see if traffic develops. Give it around 6 months and analyze the results. If Google picks it up and gives you more and more traffic each month, it could be a topic worth pursuing.
Create a New Section on Your Existing Blog
Another way to do a “proof of concept” for a new blog topic is to write about that topic on your existing blog. Of course, this only makes sense if the new topic is somehow related to one of your current blogs’ topics.
Create a Free wordpress.com Blog
The last and least ideal way to do a proof of concept for a blog topic is to launch the blog on a free platform like Blogspot or WordPress. This is less than ideal as Google doesn’t rank these sites unless the quality is exceptional and there are no other sites suitable for the search result. Nevertheless, it’s an option.
Personally, I just go ahead and launch a new blog around a topic that I believe could be profitable. I don’t see the harm in spending less than $500 to see if the topic has potential for traffic.