Got a Business Idea?

It is great to have a business idea. The real test comes how it is marketed! Let me explain. You may have built the best mouse trap but if no one knows about it then you can't make any money.

Some years back, I had a great idea. Why not come up with a 'solution for bounced email'. As you know, it is very frustrating when you send someone an email and it comes back as 'undeliverable' or 'bounced'. It breaks the chain of your workflow. Now you have to stop what you are doing; pick up the phone or track down the person's new email address. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to forward that bounced email to someone and they find the person's new email address?

So I thought I will create a Post Office on the internet where people can register their OLD & NEW email address, similar to how we fill out a change of address form and give It to the post office when we change our physical address. I contemplated on the idea for a long time because I knew it would be a major undertaking. To make sure my idea has merit, I checked with several people (friends & strangers).

'Sounds wonderful!' is what all the people said when I told them about the idea. I checked if there was anything similar already on the internet. I did not find anything so it made me more confident to pursue the idea.

I started development with my own money in the hope to beat anybody else. The solution finally materialized. I even came up with a catchy name "Switchemail". The idea being very simple that when you change email address, instead of informing a bunch of people, you register in one place and now if anyone out there has your old email address and they get an email bounced back, they can simply forward it to us and we will send it to your new email address. The idea works great. After painstaking and diligent testing and countless hours of sleepless nights, we got the whole thing to work right.

Now all we needed was a huge database. In order for us to forward the email to a person's new email address, we need the person to be registered on our site. Theoretically, if majority of the population was registered with us then it works flawless. You get a bounced email, you forward to findperson at switchemail dot com and we find the new email address. We even forward the email to the person's new email address if we have the person's permission.

Realistically, how do we get everyone to sign up? We give first month free and only charge $1/month. So money is not the issue. It is getting the word out. We are not Microsoft or have a multi-million dollar budget. Any ideas would be welcome?