Unpopular opinion: Most of us are building digital products no one actually needs
I’m starting to think the real problem with digital products isn’t distribution or even competition, it’s that a lot of what we’re building simply isn’t necessary enough for anyone to pay for, and we hide that reality behind phrases like “I just need more traffic” or “I haven’t found the right audience yet”
if we’re being honest, a huge number of products out there are just reorganized information, slightly repackaged ideas, or “complete guides” that assume people are willing to spend time learning something after they buy, and that assumption feels more and more disconnected from how people actually behave now
because when you look at what’s quietly working, it’s rarely the most detailed or thoughtful product, it’s the one that removes the most effort from the user, something they can open and use immediately without needing to think through steps or decisions, and that shift creates a weird tension where better doesn’t always win, easier does
and I get why this is uncomfortable to admit, because it challenges the idea that putting more effort into a product should naturally lead to better outcomes, but the market doesn’t really reward effort anymore, it rewards clarity and speed of value, and if a product doesn’t feel instantly useful, it gets skipped no matter how much work went into it
so maybe the reason a lot of digital products “fail” isn’t because the idea was bad or the execution was poor, but because it wasn’t solving a problem that felt urgent enough to act on right now, which is a much harder thing to confront than tweaking marketing or distribution
curious if others here are seeing the same thing or if I’m missing something, because it feels like there’s a growing gap between what creators think is valuable and what users actually pay for
I wrote a deeper breakdown of what I found, including what seems to be working vs what’s already saturated, if anyone wants to challenge or build on this
https://jarvisreach.io/blog/digital-products-to-sell-in-2026/
Hey
There's something right in this thesis but I'd push back on one piece. "Better doesn't win, easier does" conflates two different things — and I think that conflation is what's actually misleading founders.
Look at what actually wins: Notion is harder than Apple Notes. Figma is harder than PowerPoint. Linear is harder than Trello. None of them won because they removed effort. They won because they were sharper at one specific use case for one specific buyer.
The pattern isn't "easier beats better." It's "specific beats generic." A tool that does one thing precisely for one buyer feels easier because it eliminates the cognitive overhead of "is this for me, and what do I do with it." That's not lower effort in the product — that's clarity in the positioning.
So when products fail, I don't think it's because they were too detailed or required too much learning. They failed because the positioning was generic — "for anyone who wants to be more productive" instead of "for solo founders who keep losing track of customer conversations." Same effort. Different conversion. The market does reward clarity. It just punishes vague clarity disguised as breadth.
Fair point, it’s less “easier vs better” and more specific vs generic.
When a product clearly feels “made for me,” it feels easier even if it’s complex.
Most products fail in the middle, where they’re neither simple nor specific enough.