How to Find Product Ideas That Sell Using Reddit, Quora, and Amazon (2028)

Every successful product I've built started with evidence — not a hunch. Here's where I find that evidence.

The three platforms I use most for product research are Reddit, Quora, and Amazon. Each tells you something different. Together, they paint a complete picture of what people are struggling with and willing to pay to solve.

Reddit: The Raw Voice of Your Audience

Reddit is where people say what they actually think. No professional polish, no brand filter. That makes it one of the most valuable research tools for digital product creators.

How I use Reddit for research:

Keyword search within subreddits. Go to the subreddit for your niche (r/personalfinance, r/freelancing, r/productivity, r/smallbusiness, etc.) and search for terms like "wish there was," "does anyone know how to," "looking for a resource," or "help with." These phrases surface posts where people are actively expressing unmet needs.

Sort by "Top" over all time. The most upvoted posts in a niche subreddit are often the most universally resonant questions or problems. If a post from 2021 asking "how do I track client projects in Notion" still has 2,000 upvotes and 400 comments, that's durable demand.

Read the comments, not just the posts. The top-level post names the problem. The comments reveal the texture — what solutions people have tried, why they didn't work, and what they're still looking for. This is where product ideas live.

Look for repeated questions. If the same basic question appears in dozens of posts over several years, that's persistent demand. Someone asking it today is a potential buyer. If you can package a clear, actionable answer as a product, that person will pay for it.

Real example: I found my best-selling Notion template idea by searching r/freelancing for "Notion" and "client tracking." There were 30+ threads about this going back years. People were building their own systems from scratch because nothing quite worked for them. That told me a well-designed, freelancer-specific template would find buyers.

Quora: Structured Questions with Search Intent

Quora is different from Reddit in one important way: questions are more structured, and they show up in Google search results. A popular Quora question means people are searching for that answer on Google. That search intent is your audience.

How I use Quora:

Search your niche topic and filter by most-viewed answers. The questions with the most views are the ones with the most search traffic. Those are your highest-demand topics.

Look at the answers people are giving. If the top answers are vague, long-winded, or "it depends," there's room for a more concrete, actionable product. A well-structured guide or template that actually answers the question specifically is valuable.

Pay attention to follow-up questions. The comments on Quora answers often reveal the next level of the problem. Someone asking "but what do I do if [specific scenario]?" is telling you they'd pay for more detail.

Look for questions that are unanswered or poorly answered. A question with 50,000 views and one mediocre answer is a product opportunity. You don't need to compete with a comprehensive guide — you just need to be better than what's there.

Amazon: What People Already Pay For (In Book Form)

Amazon is a goldmine for product validation because it shows you exactly what people spend money on — and at what price.

How I use Amazon:

Search for books on your topic. The books with the most reviews — especially in specific sub-niches — tell you the demand is there. A book on "freelance proposal writing" with 800 reviews means a lot of people cared enough to both buy it and leave feedback.

Read the 3-star reviews. This is where the product opportunities are. 3-star reviews typically say "this was good but I wanted more of X" or "the section on Y wasn't practical enough." Those are your product specs.

Look at the table of contents. For physical books, Amazon often shows the TOC. If a chapter gets a lot of attention in reviews, that specific topic might be worth a standalone product.

Check "customers also bought." This shows you the ecosystem of related products your potential customer is buying. Understanding the full purchasing path helps you position your product and sometimes reveals gaps.

Turning Research Into a Product

After a session of research on these three platforms, I typically have:

• A list of specific, recurring problems
• Notes on what solutions people have tried and why they fell short
• A sense of the language people use to describe the problem (which informs product naming and marketing copy)

From there, I pick the most promising idea, build the minimum viable version, and launch it on MadeThis to see how it performs with real buyers.

The research doesn't guarantee success — but it dramatically improves the odds. The products that have sold best for me are all ones I could have predicted would sell based on what I found in the research phase.

For the next step after you've found an idea, read /blog/how-to-validate-your-digital-product-idea-before-you-build-it-2028-method — that's how you test whether you've found a real opportunity before investing time in building.