Market Research
One of the most important things you can do to help both you and your business out is to do some Market Research. What I mean by this is let people tell you what they want instead of trying to guess what it is they desire. How do you do this?
Market Research! If you are trying to come up with your next product or even your first product let the market you are in be it Golf, Hand Gliding, Poker or Cars, tell you what they want. How can you find this information out?
Simple. See what people are searching for in search engines, what keywords people are fighting over, what hot topic is being discussed in forums etc.. Below are some resources you can use to find this information out.
http://www.spyfu.com This site will let you search for keywords and give information on estimated cost per click, pages indexed with a specific keyword, how many adwords advertiser's there are and other keywords they are bidding on and much more. Check it out.
http://www.domaintools.com This will tell you who has registered a certain domain name and contact information. This is good for potential JV opportunities. This site does a lot more than this, make sure you check it out.
http://www.technorati.com This site tells you what people are searching for and discussing like, videos, music, movies, games, DVD's ect.. This is a powerful site for seeing what people are interested in in your market.
http://www.about.com This is another great tool for breaking down markets into individual niches and discovering what is popular and what isn't.