Is this demand real, or did you invent it? Six questions to find out

What this is

One of our published methods, written in plain language: what it can do, when to use it, what goes in and what comes out.

Why it matters

Most methods are published as papers or code. This one is written so you can decide whether it fits your problem before you invest time in it.

How to use it

Read the page top to bottom. If it matches your question, use the online tool - or subscribe and run it on your own data.

What you get

A clear answer on what the method does and does not do, plus a live curve from our own demand series. Free to read.

Free to readOnline tools from $5 per runSee it →

Demand curve read by this method — A live reading from our own demand series - the shape of the signal this method works on. 570 industries are tracked daily; this is one of them.

Our own data: 391 Chinese cities scored across 63 industry categories - each cell measured, not guessed (central.city_opportunities, 2026-10-08).
Data base: InfoGap own records - 391 Chinese cities x 8 dimensions, 213,208 city-industry rows, 40,499 POIs (central / lifechain, 2026-10-08).

Algorithm Handbook · one algorithm per page · plain language throughout

1In one line: what it does

Spend three minutes answering six questions to judge whether something is "what people actually want", or "what you invented yourself".

2When to use it

These three things are probably happening to you right now:

You are paying for clicks on Xiaohongshu or a forum; the clicks come, but nobody ever asks about the thing.

What most people do: keep adding money, thinking "the volume isn't enough yet".

Using it: answer the six questions first and see how many people did all three things — searched, tried, paid. Someone who only "says he wants it" is potential demand; don't treat that as a channel that closes and pour money into it.

A friend says "people will definitely want this".

What most people do: hear one sentence and start working.

Using it: break that one sentence into the six questions and ask them one by one — the ones that cannot be answered are your risk.

You want to do something yourself, and the more you research the more confident you feel.

What most people do: the more they research, the more certain they become, then they put the money in.

Using it: run it with "yourself" as the person being questioned, and see whether you are just cheering yourself on.

3What goes in · what comes out

Input: the answers to six questions (this is the exact set used in the real run)

What he says he wants — a coffee shop where you can get a good shot in one visit
Has he searched for it — yes
Has he tried other ways — yes
Has he paid for this problem — no
How much would he pay — 60 (out of 100)
What is he willing to do — willing to leave contact details

What comes out

Output: the text it produced, not a single word changed

Behaviour score 55 / commitment score 19.0 / total 74.0
Verdict: 🟡 potential demand (confidence: medium)
Item-by-item check:
  ✅ Actively searched for a solution (+25)
  ✅ Tried other ways (+30)
  ❌ Has not paid (0)
  ✅ Willing to take a concrete action (+10)
Advice: nudge him into one action, and lower the threshold for the first try

How to read it: the biggest deduction is "has not paid" (30 points gone outright), so it only reaches "potential demand", not "real demand". Adding money is fine, but first think of a way to get him to hand over a little money and close that gap.

📈One chart: behaviour score against commitment score

For the same demand, being willing to spend time and being willing to spend money are two different things — two bars on the chart.

4How to use it

There is no public calculator for this yet — the method above is the whole procedure; on this site the answers have to be keyed in by hand.

Write down the six answers for the person you are judging
Work out the behaviour score and the commitment score from those answers
Read the total (0–100), the verdict colour, and which items lost points

5Who it's for

People holding an "I think people want this" idea and about to spend money on it; owners who bought traffic but get nobody asking; people helping a friend judge an idea.

6Common questions

Q: Are six questions enough?

A: It does not judge how big the market is, only whether this person really wants it. For market size, look at it together with the "is the industry still alive" algorithm.

Q: Is 74 good or bad?

A: 50 and above is potential demand; only 80 and above is real demand. 74 means: you can test with small money, but you must not bet big.

Q: If he hasn't paid, is it definitely no good?

A: Not no good, but risky. Build a cheap small version first, get him to actually pay once, then scale it up.

7Related algorithms

funnel-evaluate · which layer is it stuck at traffic-target · were the keywords chosen well industry-vitality · is this industry still alive ← Back to the Algorithm Handbook Handbook index

✓Why this scenario exists (evidence)

Why this scenario exists:

The overseas scouting report has one measured number: forum channels are the cheapest clicks anywhere ($0.13–0.19 each), yet 784 clicks produced only 1 lead. The same report's instruction is — "use it to validate, not as a channel to close deals".

That report holds 21,589 raw samples; 1,374 were sampled out and sent to the model, and 1,120 quotes passed word-by-word verification (any quote the model invented was discarded).

Source: the site's overseas scouting report (the full version is kept as a Markdown file on the overseas research machine).