Had you subscribed to Fast Company through direct mail in the early 90s, chances are, the magazine you had wanted didn’t exist.

Had you ordered a pair of shoes on Zappos at the end of the 90s, chances are, one of the founders would have ran to the nearest shoe store to purchase it and ship it to you.

If you visit one of my recent Web projects, chances are, the product purchase pages don’t really allow you to purchase the products.

Why?

Because you don’t have to have a product to test a product; there’s many ways to validate demand for a model. With a bit of creativity and the drive to make something believable, you can test parallel models very cheaply. It can be time consuming but, it sure beats building the wrong thing and realizing it too late…

How can you test your offer quickly and cheaply?