To validate your online course idea, we'll follow Jeff Cobb's framework of searching, listening, asking, and testing. Let's talk about listening.

Pssst. If you haven't used the searching technique, go do that before continuing here!

In the listening phase, you're going to go a little bit deeper than surface level. Now that you know what search results are out there for your topic, you need to get a sense of the actual conversations people are having in your niche. You can do this anywhere on the Internet where people are writing or talking about your topic.

You can try:

• Digging into the engagement and comments on your own blog, if you have one
• Perusing Feedly, a blog aggregator that allows you to follow bloggers in your niche and view their most popular posts

But the easiest way to start, and the one I recommend, is to do some research on Quora, a popular question and answer site. Quora is a place for people to ask any kind of question they have, and wait for subject matter experts to weigh in on the answers. It's valuable here for you to see not just what questions people are asking, but also how others are answering.

• Do you notice any subject matter experts? What products are they promoting?
• Do you notice a certain topic sparking a discussion or debate?
• Are there lots of people weighing in, but no conclusive answers?
• Is everyone saying the same thing, but missing something?
• Do people link to outside resources? What quality are those resources?

You can also follow a question and see how people respond and converse over time. Other ways to "listen" to your audience are to actually listen to podcasts, read comment sections on blogs, attend webinars and participate in chats...and listen anywhere real people are talking about your course topic.

Investigating these more detailed conversations should help you get a sense of where you can fit into this online community. Maybe you have a special approach or expertise that you don't see reflected in discussions, or that there aren't many high-quality, clearly explained resources. You could fill that gap.