Marketing for Geeks

This is a new area for me so what's below is mostly speculation and items on my todo list.

Writing code is easy for me, but deciding what to write has always been more challenging. I can't say I've found a solution, but I did find a technique in Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Work Week that I'm trying out. The basic idea is to market test your idea before investing and to fail until you succeed.

Step 1: Decide who your building it (whatever it is) for.
Step 2: Come up with a bunch of ideas for things they might be willing to pay for. Don't filter too much.
Step 3: Build a simple site saying what it is and what it does. Tell your visitors that it's still under development, but they can join the beta program by giving you their email address.
Step 4: Promote the site with Ad words.
Step 5: Build the product if you get a decent conversion rate, dump it otherwise.

See Tim's book for details.

I don't see why I couldn't test a new idea every couple weeks. Given enough practice, I don't see why I wouldn't start to get good at it.