Whether you're a new entrepreneur looking for your first product idea, or a veteran business owner wanting to expand, it can be difficult to find the perfect idea for your next product. In fact, it can seem impossible.

Today and tomorrow, Promotional Consultant Today shares these tips from Foundr magazine editor Nathan Chan, for vetting out the best product ideas.

1. Let your target market tell you what they want. It's scary to launch a new product. What if nobody buys it? What if your product is a flop? What if the market changes? Chan says to mitigate these risks by letting your target market tell you exactly what they want and creating it. This goes back to the age-old business cornerstone of finding a need and filling it.

He suggests these methods for listening to your target markets.

Eavesdrop on Amazon: Amazon isn't just the world's largest retailer. It's also one of the best market research platforms available to you. Start digging through the reviews of similar products, especially focusing on the three-star reviews. Pay special attention to detailed written reviews; often the reviewer will mention what they would have liked have seen in the product.

Research on Reddit and Quora: Reddit coins itself as the "front page of the internet." Spend some time combing through targeted subreddits—the conversations related to the news content—and pay special attention to the types of questions people ask to understand their pain points.

Quora is a social network that seems to be made for free market research. On Quora, users ask questions about specific topics that are answered by the community. It's like a high-quality Yahoo! Answers. These questions can also give you great insight into what types of problems your target market is experiencing so you can create a product to solve them.

2. Tune in to your competitors. What are your competitors doing well? What are their audiences responding to? If a competitor is doing well with a specific product, chances are you could do even better. Can you improve on a product that is already out there? Can you improve on a competitor's product? Can you fill a gap that their product doesn't cover?

Chan uses this example: Let's say you have a business to teach people how to learn Spanish. A business in the same niche has a successful online course teaching through immersion. You might take a different approach and offer an online course to teach Spanish through memory improvement methods if you think those are more effective. The basis is the same—teach Spanish through an online course–but the approach is different.

Ready for more ways to source product ideas? Read PCT again tomorrow.

Source: Nathan Chan is the publisher and editor of Foundr magazine, an avid table tennis player and a lover of everything entrepreneurship.