Here’s the whole game in three questions. Everything else in this book is just plumbing.
- Whose problem am I solving? A specific person, not “everyone”.
- Is it significant? Does it cost them money, time, sleep or dignity? If it costs them nothing, they’ll pay you nothing.
- How do I solve it? With a product, a service, a digital product, software, or someone else’s product as an affiliate.
Find someone’s problem, fix it, and you get money and trust. Trust is the one that compounds.
2.1 Quora — the lazy people goldmine
Quora is people asking questions all day long. Here’s what this Bogan does:
The two-minute method
- Find recent questions with no answers, or bad ones.
- Spend two minutes actually finding the answer.
- Post it. Properly, helpfully, no sales pitch.
You don’t need to be an expert. What I found is that people are just plain lazy — they can’t be bothered looking. Being the person who did bother is the whole edge.
The ones I like are “what’s a good wifi speaker” — or a good anything. That’s an open door to recommend the one you personally use. Later, once you’ve done Chapter 7 properly, that recommendation can carry an affiliate link. Note that word: later. Turn up on day one spraying links and you’ll get flagged as spam and lose the account.
2.2 Reddit — where people complain honestly
Reddit is the best free market research on the internet, because people go there to whinge without a brand watching them.
If you haven’t found your niche, browse what’s trending and let the creative juices flow. If you have a niche, this is where you find both your research and your customers.
Search the subreddit for phrases like “has anyone tried”, “is it worth it”, “I regret buying” and “what do you use for”. Those four searches will hand you a list of problems people are actively spending money to solve.
Every subreddit has self-promotion rules and the mods enforce them hard. Read the sidebar rules before you post anything. Contribute for a couple of weeks before you mention what you do. Get this wrong and you’re banned, and Reddit bans are effectively permanent.
2.3 Facebook Groups — where the buyers actually are
This is where a lot of the old edition’s advice has shifted. Public forums are quieter than they were; Facebook Groups are where the real communities went.
Say I like German Shepherds. I’d join the Shepherd groups and get into the conversations about multivitamins and joint supplements. Two weeks of reading tells you exactly what these people are worried about, what they’ve already bought, and what nobody’s selling them properly. That’s a business.
You can also start your own group. It’s slower, but a group you own is an asset — same logic as the email list in Chapter 6.
2.4 The comments section is free research
New for this edition, and it’s the best one:
- YouTube comments on the top three videos in your niche. Sort by newest. Every “but how do you...” is a gap.
- TikTok comments — same job, younger audience, faster trends.
- Amazon reviews, specifically the 3-star ones. Five stars are fans, one stars are cranks, three stars tell you exactly what’s wrong with the product. That’s your angle.
- Google’s “People also ask” box. Free keyword research that Google is literally handing you.
2.5 Pinterest — ideas and buying intent
Still need ideas? Take a walk through Pinterest. People use it to find things to try in their daily lives, which means they arrive already looking to buy or make something.
It skews heavily towards home, food, craft, weddings, fashion and DIY. If your niche is in that list, Pinterest is a traffic source in its own right, not just a research tool.
2.6 Where to get pictures that don’t get you sued
Good images make your blog, posts and site look like a business instead of a hobby. But grabbing images off Google is copyright infringement and there are firms whose entire business is sending invoices to people who do it.
| Source | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Unsplash / Pexels / Pixabay | High-quality free stock photos, commercial use allowed | Free |
| Flickr | Huge archive — filter to Creative Commons and credit the photographer | Free, with conditions |
| DeviantArt | Original art and inspiration. Ask the artist before you use anything | Ask first |
| Canva | Templates, logos, socials, thumbnails. This is the one you’ll actually live in | Free tier is plenty |
| AI image tools | Fast, unlimited, no licence hassle for most uses | Free to cheap |
Handy for backgrounds, mockups and social posts. Do not use them to fake a product photo, a testimonial, or a person who doesn’t exist endorsing you — that’s misleading conduct under Australian Consumer Law, and it’s the fastest way to torch the trust you’re building.
2.7 Blogging and testing ideas
Tumblr, Medium, Substack and a plain blog on your own site all do the same job at this stage: a place to think out loud, test whether anyone cares, and start being findable.
Bogans use these to test a product or an idea before building anything. Write three posts about the problem you found. If nobody reads them, you’ve lost an afternoon. If people turn up and comment, you’ve found something.
Don’t tell everyone, our students are working hard on this… yeah nah, bugger it, tell whoever you want. Do all of them, and don’t do it once. One post on one platform is a lottery ticket. Twenty posts across four platforms is a business. The people who make this work are the ones who came back on day thirty.
2.8 Meetup and getting off the screen
Meetup finds actual humans in your area with similar interests. Good place to network, and you can start your own group.
Alright, don’t overheat — I can hear you saying “Poida, this isn’t making me rich, mate.” Correct. Right now we’re finding people who could be customers. When someone shows interest in what you offer, you get their details. You’re building a contact list.
Not all of them will buy today. The average Bogan hasn’t got big money spare right now. So we hook the cashed-up ones now and revisit the rest later. Build the list. Then when we set up the socials properly in Chapter 4, we’ve already got organic leads and followers instead of shouting into an empty room.
Patience, grasshopper.
Before you go to Chapter 3
- Write down three problems you’ve seen real people complain about this week.
- For each one, write who has it and what it’s costing them.
- Pick the one you’d be happy talking about every day for a year. That’s your starting niche. It is not a marriage — you can change it.