9 Best Ways To Find $100/Day Digital Products (How To Find Digital Products To Sell)

The hardest part of starting a digital product business is not building the product. It is not setting up the payment processor or designing the cover. The hard part is figuring out what to build in the first place. Choose the wrong idea and you spend two weeks on something nobody wanted. Choose the right one and you could have your first sale by the weekend.

In this video, Alston walks through nine real places he visits when he wants to surface digital product ideas that already have buyers. These are not vague suggestions. Each method points to a specific platform, a specific search move, and a real signal of demand, not just a guess.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The two-part Etsy strategy that finds low-competition downloads people are already buying
How to reverse engineer the product lineups of successful YouTubers in any niche
Why ClickBank is a free competitive intelligence tool, not just an affiliate network
The Amazon book chapter trick that generates low-ticket product ideas in minutes
How Google Trends gives you real-time demand signals you can act on today
How to mine Facebook group questions for pain points nobody has packaged into a product yet
An honest look at where each method falls short so you know what to watch for
A free quiz at finder.platformproof.com that matches your specific skill set to the right digital product market

Method 1: Etsy, Two Ways

Etsy is the first place Alston checks, and he does it two different ways. The obvious approach is to go to etsy.com and search for words like “downloadable,” “template,” “planner,” or “printable.” Scrolling through those results gives you a live picture of what buyers are actively purchasing. But there is a faster, more targeted approach on top of that.

Alston uses a paid keyword research tool called Ahrefs. He puts etsy.com into the Site Explorer, pulls up the organic keywords section (which shows over 559 million keywords), and then filters by terms like “template,” “download,” and “svg.” That combination strips away broad product results and surfaces specific, searchable items. One example from the video: “berry yoda svg” has a keyword difficulty of 2 out of 100 and pulls 15,000 searches per month. A keyword difficulty of 2 means very few sellers are competing for that spot.

Ahrefs costs around $99 per month. Alston’s suggestion is to sign up for one month, do all your research, then cancel. You do not need a subscription long-term to benefit from one focused research session. Wedding-related searches also kept surfacing during his demo, which he pointed to as a good example of how one trending category can spawn multiple product ideas: programs, timelines, vow templates, seating chart layouts.

The third Etsy move is to pull up an active Etsy shop selling downloadable products and scroll through their full catalog. You are not copying their work. You are studying the product mix a successful seller built and asking what that mix tells you about what buyers in that niche actually want.

Method 2: YouTube Channels in Your Niche

Pick five to ten YouTubers operating in any niche you are considering. Then look at what they are selling. In the video, Alston uses a creator named Alyssa Rose as an example. She is active in the Etsy space and sells a course plus a membership to help people build an Etsy business. That product mix tells you what buyers in that niche will pay for.

You are reverse engineering what is already working. If a large channel with a real audience is selling a particular type of product, that product has a proven market. You are not looking to copy the creator’s work. You are looking to understand the format, the price range, and the specific outcome buyers are paying for.

Alston also demonstrates this with a woodworking search on YouTube. Typing a niche keyword into the YouTube search bar and then clicking through the top channels to look at their link in bio, their description links, and their pinned posts reveals the product ladder those creators have built. The links almost always lead to a course, a template pack, a membership, or a coaching offer. That is your product map.

Method 3: ClickBank Marketplace (Free Research Tool)

ClickBank is usually talked about as an affiliate marketing platform, but Alston uses it as a free research tool for digital product ideas. Sign up for a free account, go to the Marketplace tab, and browse by category. Every product listed there is already selling well enough that vendors built out an entire affiliate program around it.

In the video demo, Alston clicks into the “Home and Garden” category and immediately finds Ted’s Woodworking, a popular digital product about woodworking plans, and My Shed Plans. Then he checks the “Wedding” category and finds “Wedding Speeches for All.” His point is not that you should copy these products. His point is that these categories have proven buyer demand. You can create your own version, build it better, or go after a sub-topic within the same niche.

The fact that a product is on ClickBank and has active affiliates promoting it tells you the market has real money moving through it. That is a stronger signal than a keyword tool number because it represents actual completed transactions.

Method 4: Popular Blogs With “Tools” or “Resources” Pages

Large blogs that operate in a niche will almost always have a “resources,” “tools,” or “shop” page. On that page they list the digital products they sell or recommend. Alston demonstrates this with his own site, austingodble.com, showing a “Business Tools” page that lists the products he offers.

The research move is simple. Find the five or ten most established blogs in your niche, go to their resources or tools pages, and write down every product format you see. Are they selling ebooks? Templates? Mini courses? Membership communities? Printable workbooks? That inventory tells you what buyers in that niche expect to spend money on and what format they prefer to consume it in.

Once you know the format, you can build a better version, a more specific version, or an entry-level version at a lower price point. A well-established blog has already done years of testing to find what their audience will pay for. You benefit from that testing without having to run the experiments yourself.

Method 5: Amazon Book Chapters

Go to Amazon and type your niche keyword into the search bar. Look at the books that appear. Click on the ones with strong reviews and use the “Look Inside” feature to read the table of contents. Every chapter in that table is a potential standalone digital product.

Alston demonstrates this with an Etsy-focused book. The chapters cover specific subtopics: how to set up a shop, how to write product descriptions, how to handle shipping, how to run promotions. Each of those chapters could be a short guide, a checklist, a video mini-course, or a done-for-you template pack sold for $5 to $17.

The advantage here is that books with strong sales rankings tell you the audience is real and the topic has depth. The chapter-level detail tells you which sub-problems inside the niche people care enough about to buy a solution for. You are not writing a book. You are identifying a specific pain point inside a niche and building a tightly focused product around that one problem.

Not sure which digital product idea matches your actual skills and experience?

Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com to find your best fit in under two minutes.

Method 6: Social Media Profile Links

On Instagram, TikTok, and similar platforms, every creator has a link in their bio. That link almost always leads to a product, a landing page, or a freebie that feeds into a paid offer. Alston demonstrates this by searching “woodworking” on Instagram and clicking through profiles to see where the bio links go.

What you are looking for is a pattern. If every woodworking creator in that search leads to some version of the same product type, that is the format the market has validated. If you see variety, that could mean the market is still figuring out what it wants, or it could mean there is room for a new format to stand out.

Once you identify a product that is already selling, you can look at the reviews, comments, and community feedback around it. What do buyers say is missing? What did they wish was included? What problem did the product not fully solve? That gap is your angle. You are not copying the product. You are building the version that finishes the job the existing product left incomplete.

Method 7: Pinterest

Pinterest is part search engine, part product discovery feed. When Alston types “digital products” into Pinterest, he is looking at three things at once: organic blog posts listing digital product ideas, ads from sellers actively promoting their products, and the comments and saves on popular pins that reveal what people are responding to.

In the video, he spots an ad from Lightspeed, another promoting color grading LUTs for video editors, and a Tony Robbins course ad. The ads matter because advertisers only keep running ads that convert. If a type of product is being advertised consistently on Pinterest, it is because buyers are clicking and purchasing.

Pinterest also surfaces a lot of blog post roundups like “six digital products you can sell this month” or “best printables to create for passive income.” Those posts aggregate what is currently performing well across many sellers and give you a curated list of ideas you can then take to one of the other methods on this list to validate further.

Method 8: Udemy

Udemy is a course marketplace where instructors sell video-based training on almost any topic. Browsing Udemy by category shows you what topics have active buyer markets. In the video, Alston clicks into Photography and finds courses on DaVinci Resolve, wildlife photography, drone photography, and wedding photography. DaVinci Resolve is a free video editing software, and the fact that people pay for courses teaching it tells you buyers will purchase training on tools that are themselves free, as long as the training saves them time.

There is an additional benefit if you sign up as a Udemy instructor. The instructor dashboard includes data showing which categories have knowledge gaps, meaning areas where buyer demand exists but not enough courses cover the topic well. That information tells you exactly where to focus before you build anything.

You do not have to sell on Udemy. The platform is useful as a research database. Once you find a topic with demand, you can build a course and sell it on your own platform at a higher margin, or you can use the Udemy listing to validate the topic before committing to a full build.

Method 9: Google Trends

Google Trends shows you what people are searching for right now and how search interest has moved over time. Alston demonstrates this by looking at the trending searches for the day, which included topics like Pride Month, the NBA Finals, Wimbledon, and a news story about Brittney Griner. He walks through how each trending topic could become a digital product if you have genuine knowledge in that area.

His examples include: a Wimbledon facts book, a guide to staying safe when traveling internationally, a musical process breakdown for creators who want to sound like a trending artist. He is clear that this only works if you have real knowledge. “If you don’t know how to hit like Aaron Judge, that might not work out so well.”

The trending searches dashboard inside Google Trends also lets you filter by category. If you only want to see what is trending in sports, entertainment, business, or health, you can narrow the feed down to your niche and scan for product opportunities that match your existing knowledge. Trending topics have a short window, so the advantage here is speed. If you can build and publish a targeted short guide within a few days of a topic peaking, you can capture search traffic while the topic is still hot.

Bonus Method: Facebook Ads and Group Questions

Alston closes with Facebook as a two-part bonus. The first part is scrolling your Facebook feed with the intention of studying the ads. In the video, he spots an ad for a high-ticket funnel training at $97 and another for a program helping online coaches grow their income. Each ad represents a real buyer problem someone decided to build a product around. If you see the same type of ad repeatedly, that product is converting and that problem has a willing buyer base.

The second part is Facebook groups. Alston goes into a group called “Affiliate Marketing for Everyone” and types common question words into the group search: “how,” “what,” “why,” “where.” Those searches surface posts from group members asking about real problems they are stuck on. He demonstrates searching “how” and filtering the results by posts to find people asking things like “how do I get traffic?” or “why isn’t this working?”

Each one of those questions is a product idea. If ten people in a group are asking the same question and nobody has given them a clear, packaged answer, you could create a guide, a checklist, or a mini course that solves that exact problem. The group has already done your market research for you by showing you the real questions real people are stuck on right now. You can also search for groups directly in the Facebook search bar. Alston searches “how to create a digital product” and looks at the posts that come up to find related pain points and search terms he had not considered.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

These nine methods are genuinely useful but each one has limits worth naming before you spend hours on research.

Etsy with Ahrefs costs money. At $99 per month, it is a real expense for someone just starting out. Alston’s suggestion to sign up for one month and cancel is sensible, but you need to know the spend is coming. The free alternative, browsing Etsy directly, works but takes significantly more time.

Trending topics on Google Trends have a short shelf life. A product built around a news story from last week will not sell well two months from now. This method is best suited for creators who can build and publish quickly, not people who need three months to complete a product.

Facebook group research requires the right group. Not every group is active. Alston acknowledges this in the video, noting that the affiliate marketing group he checked was not particularly engaged. You may need to test several groups before you find one where members are actively posting questions.

All nine methods only tell you what has buyers. They do not tell you whether you have the knowledge or experience to deliver a product in that niche. A market research session should always be paired with an honest self-assessment of what you can actually teach, build, or deliver at a quality level that earns positive reviews.

None of these methods replace originality. Alston says this multiple times in the video. Browsing other people’s products is for inspiration and market validation, not for copying. Creating original content, even if it covers a topic that already has products, is both an ethical requirement and a practical one, since copycat products rarely outperform the originals they copy.

A Simple Three-Step Filter Before You Commit to an Idea

After running through one or more of these nine methods, you will probably have a list of potential product ideas. Here is a short filter to use before you commit time to building anything.

Does evidence of buyers exist? This means active Etsy listings with reviews, ClickBank products with affiliates promoting them, courses on Udemy with student enrollments, or repeated ads on Facebook and Pinterest. If you cannot find proof that people are spending money on this type of product, the idea needs more validation before you build.
Do you have genuine knowledge or experience in this area? You do not need to be a world-class expert. But you need to be ahead of your buyer by enough steps that you can give them a faster path than they would find on their own. If you are starting from zero and the buyer would be starting from zero, the product will not hold up under scrutiny.
Can you describe the specific outcome the buyer gets? Not “learn about woodworking” but “complete five beginner projects in a weekend using only a jigsaw and a sander.” The more specific the outcome, the easier the product is to sell and the more likely the buyer is to get real value from it. If you cannot state the outcome clearly before you build the product, the product idea is not ready yet.

Find Your X

Knowing nine places to find digital product ideas is useful. But at some point the research has to connect to you specifically, your skills, your experience, the things you know that other people would pay to learn faster. If you are not sure where your knowledge lines up with a real buyer market, the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com walks you through a short set of questions and points you toward the product format and niche that fits what you already have. It takes about two minutes and gives you a specific starting point instead of a long list of options to wade through.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need Ahrefs to use the Etsy research method?

No. Ahrefs speeds up the process significantly by letting you filter Etsy’s 559 million keywords by multiple terms at once, but you can do a slower version of the same research for free by typing keywords like “downloadable,” “template,” and “svg” directly into the Etsy search bar and scrolling through the results. The free method takes more time and gives you less data on search volume, but it will still surface what is actively selling.

What does “keyword difficulty of 2” mean in the Etsy Ahrefs example?

Ahrefs scores keyword difficulty on a scale from 0 to 100. A score of 2 means very few competing sellers are ranking for that search term on Etsy. That is a low barrier to entry. A score closer to 100 means the competition is heavy and it would be hard to get your listing seen without an established sales history. For new sellers, looking for terms below 20 on the difficulty scale is a reasonable starting filter.

Is it ethical to look at what other creators are selling and make something similar?

Yes, with an important line. Studying what sells, understanding the format buyers prefer, and identifying gaps in existing products is how every competitive market works. What is not acceptable is copying someone’s actual content, design, or unique framework. You are allowed to sell a wedding template pack because wedding templates are a category, not someone’s invention. You are not allowed to copy another seller’s specific template designs and resell them. Build original content that covers a topic with proven demand.

How long does it take to go from idea research to a product ready to sell?

For a simple low-ticket product like a PDF guide, checklist, or template pack, a few days to a week of focused work is realistic. For a video course, a few weeks is more common depending on the depth of the material. Alston mentions in the video that after using the ClickBank research method, someone could create a wedding speech guide and have it up for sale “by the weekend.” That kind of timeline is more realistic for a tightly scoped written product than for a full course.

Can I use these methods if I have not picked a niche yet?

Yes. Several of these methods are deliberately broad. Google Trends shows you what is getting attention right now across all categories. Pinterest and Facebook group searches give you a wide view of buyer questions across many topics. The goal in the early stages is to notice which topics you keep coming back to and which ones genuinely interest you, because building a product in a niche you find boring makes the work much harder to sustain.

What types of digital products tend to sell best for new creators?

Based on what surfaces repeatedly across these nine methods, the most common entry-level formats are PDF guides and ebooks, printable templates and planners, and short video mini-courses. These formats require less production time than a full multi-week course, sell at price points between $5 and $47 where buyers take the risk more easily, and can be delivered instantly without any fulfillment work. SVG files for crafters, as shown in the Etsy Ahrefs example, are another popular format with a large active buyer base.

What should I do with a trending topic from Google Trends if I am not an expert in it?

Skip it. Alston is direct about this in the video: the trending topic method only works if you have genuine knowledge in the area. Creating a product about something you just looked up is risky because buyers who know the topic will spot shallow content immediately, and negative reviews will hurt your ability to sell future products. Trending topics are best paired with knowledge you already have, not knowledge you are planning to acquire.

How do I know when I have enough research to start building?

When you can answer three questions clearly: Who is the specific buyer? What specific problem does the product solve? What does the buyer have or know after they go through it that they did not have before? If you can answer all three without vague language, you have enough to start building. If your answers are still general (“people who want to make money” or “anyone interested in photography”), you need another round of research to tighten the idea down.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “9 Best Ways To Find $100/Day Digital Products,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/3v-HGwGdBQs
Etsy marketplace for downloadable digital products: https://www.etsy.com
Ahrefs Site Explorer for keyword research: https://ahrefs.com
ClickBank marketplace for affiliate and digital products: https://www.clickbank.com
Udemy online course marketplace: https://www.udemy.com
Google Trends for real-time search demand: https://trends.google.com