Now that you've (hopefully) narrowed your target customers to those with traits you can clearly articulate, you need to do some research to find out how many of them there are. The goal of this step is to come up with a number and learn more about them (for the subsequent steps).

I highly recommend the following link to a great video by David Teten on how to get free (or very low-cost) market research, as well as an accompanying slideshare presentation:

And here are some other places you can find research:

• //www.bizstats.com/
• //www.economy.com/freelunch/
• //www.hoovers.com/
• //www.census.gov/
• Your local entrepreneurship center
• Your accountant or lawyer
• Industry Associations
• Google

Use the spreadsheet attached to list information about your target market and the total market size.