Digital Product Ideas: Brainstorm and Track in Notion
A repeatable system for generating digital product ideas and scoring them in Notion, so the best idea rises to the top instead of getting lost.
Most digital product ideas die the same way: jotted in a notes app, never compared to anything, forgotten. The problem isn't a shortage of ideas, it's that good and bad ideas sit in the same undifferentiated pile, so the best one never surfaces. The fix is a small Notion system that captures ideas the moment they appear and scores them against each other, so your next product is always sitting at the top of a sorted list.
Where good product ideas actually come from
Before the system, the inputs. The strongest digital product ideas come from a few reliable places, and it helps to actively mine them rather than wait for inspiration:
- Problems you've already solved for yourself. If you built a system, spreadsheet, or process to fix your own pain, others have the same pain. Your solution is a product draft.
- Questions you get asked repeatedly. A question you've answered five times is a guide, template, or checklist waiting to exist.
- Things people do badly or slowly by hand. Any tedious manual process is a candidate for a template that does it for them.
- Adjacent needs to products you already use. Templates pair with courses, checklists pair with templates, printables pair with planners.
- Communities you're in. Recurring complaints in a forum or group are pre-validated demand.
Set a recurring reminder to spend ten minutes scanning these sources and dumping whatever comes up into your ideas database. Quantity first, judgment later.
The ideas database
Build one Notion database, Product Ideas, and keep the properties minimal so capture stays frictionless:
- Name (the idea in a few words).
- Problem (one line: what pain it solves, for whom).
- Audience (who specifically).
- Format (template, guide, printable, course, etc.).
- Three number properties: Demand, Excitement, Effort, each scored 1-5.
- A Score formula.
- Status (Idea, Validating, Building, Shipped, Parked).
The magic is in the three numbers and the formula. Capture should take fifteen seconds; scoring is what makes the database useful.
The scoring formula
Use a simple formula that rewards demand and your own motivation while penalizing effort:
Score = Demand + Excitement - Effort
That's it. With each component on a 1-5 scale, scores range from roughly -4 to 9. A sorted view, highest score first, puts the ideas that are wanted, that you want to build, and that won't take forever right at the top.
Why include Excitement? Because a first or side product you're bored by won't get finished, and an unfinished product earns nothing regardless of demand. And why subtract Effort? Because a slightly-less-perfect idea you can ship this month beats a brilliant one you'll abandon in three. The formula deliberately favors shippable.
You can refine it later, weight demand more heavily, add a confidence multiplier, but resist the urge to over-engineer it on day one. A blunt score you actually use beats a precise one you don't.
The views that make it work
Three views turn the database from a list into a decision tool:
- Top ideas: a table sorted by Score descending, filtered to Status = Idea. This is your shortlist. The top row is, by your own criteria, your best next product.
- In progress: filtered to Validating or Building, so active work is separated from the backlog.
- Graveyard: filtered to Parked. Keep rejected ideas, don't delete them. An idea that scored low when you had no audience may score very differently a year later, and the notes on why you parked it are genuinely useful.
From idea to validated
A high score is a hypothesis, not a guarantee. Before you commit to building the top idea, do quick, cheap validation and record it on the idea's page:
- Search whether competing products exist, competition is a signal of demand, not a reason to quit.
- Post the problem (not the product) to your audience and watch the reaction.
- Offer to build it for one person who has the problem, and see if they care.
If validation holds, flip the status to Building and move it into your product workspace. If it doesn't, park it with a note, that note is data for next time.
Keeping the pipeline alive
The system only works if ideas keep flowing in. Two habits sustain it:
- Capture instantly. The moment an idea appears, add a row, even just a name. Score it later.
- Review weekly. Five minutes to score new captures and re-rank the top view. The list stays current, and your next product is always one glance away.
The takeaway
You don't have an idea problem; you have a comparison problem. A tiny Notion database with three score inputs and one formula turns a chaotic pile of maybes into a ranked, living shortlist, so instead of wondering what to build next, you open one view and the answer is sitting at the top.