From guessing to data: how I built a research tool for digital product creators

I was building digital products on Etsy and kept running into the same problem - I had no idea what to create.

I'd spend hours designing a PDF, list it, and get nothing. No sales, no traction. I thought the problem was the design. Then the price. Then the listing photos. But the real problem was simpler and more embarrassing - I was picking topics based on gut feel.

I started looking for a tool that could tell me what people were actually searching for before I created anything. Something built for digital product creators, not SEO agencies. It didn't exist.

So I built FolioSeed.

You enter a niche - dog training, personal finance, wedding planning, anything - choose a PDF format, and in about 30 seconds you get a scored list of high-demand, low-competition opportunities ranked by demand, competition gap and monetization potential. Each result comes with a suggested title, target audience and monetization method.

I built the whole thing myself. Auth, payments, AI integration, cloud storage, usage tracking - no technical co-founder, no agency, no team. Just me figuring it out one problem at a time.

It's live at folioseed.com with a free tier - no credit card required.

If you're building digital products and you've ever launched something to silence, you'll know exactly why I built this.

Happy to answer any questions. 🌿