How to Research Your Competition Before Launching a Digital Product

There are two ways people approach competition when launching a digital product.

The first approach: ignore it entirely. "My product is different," they tell themselves. They don't research what else is out there, they build in isolation, and they launch into a market they don't understand.

The second approach: get paralyzed by it. They find successful competitors, conclude there's no room for them, and never launch at all.

Both approaches are mistakes. The right approach is to study your competition strategically — not to copy them, not to be discouraged by them, but to understand the market and find the gap where you can win.

Here's how I do competitive research before every launch.

Step 1: Find Your Actual Competitors

Start by finding everyone who's already selling a product similar to yours.

Search in:

• Etsy: Your category + most relevant keywords. Sort by bestsellers. Note the top 5-10 products.
• Gumroad and MadeThis marketplace: Search your product type and see what comes up.
• Google: Search "[product type] digital download," "[product type] template," "[product type] course." Look at what's ranking on page 1.
• Amazon: For ebooks and educational content especially.
• Pinterest: Lots of digital product sellers drive traffic from Pinterest. Search your product type and see whose products show up.

Make a list. You're looking for both direct competitors (products nearly identical to yours) and indirect competitors (products solving the same problem a different way).

Step 2: Analyze Their Products

For each competitor you've identified, dig into the details:

What exactly do they offer?

• How many items/files are included?
• What format? (PDF, Canva template, Notion template, video, audio?)
• How many pages, lessons, or deliverables?
• Is it a one-time purchase or a subscription?

What do they charge? Note the price points across the range of competitors. This tells you what the market accepts. If most similar products are priced $15-47, launching at $150 requires a clear reason — if you can't articulate why your product is worth 3-10x more, you might be setting yourself up to fail.

How do they describe it? Read their product descriptions carefully. What benefits do they lead with? What pain points do they mention? What transformation do they promise? This tells you what resonates with buyers in this space — and what the standard copywriting sounds like (which you can do better than).

How are buyers responding? Read the reviews. Every negative review is a gap you can fill. Every positive review tells you what buyers actually value. If reviews consistently mention "easy to customize," that's a feature that matters. If reviews say "missing instructions," that's something you should include.

Step 3: Find the Gaps

After you've analyzed your competitors, you're looking for gaps — things the existing products don't do well, audiences they're not serving, angles they're not taking.

Common gaps I've found in competitive research:

Format gap: All competitors offer PDFs. You could offer the same content as an editable Canva template, making it more accessible to people who want to customize it.

Audience gap: Competitors are creating general products. You could create the same product specifically for a sub-niche — "for freelancers," "for new parents," "for small business owners" — and own that specific audience.

Quality gap: The top-selling products are... not that impressive. The design is dated, the instructions are thin, the content is generic. You could create something significantly better and capture the market from the quality angle.

Price gap: There are expensive options and free/cheap options, but nothing in the middle. Or everything is cheap and there's room for a premium, comprehensive option. Find the unoccupied price point.

Completeness gap: Competitors each solve one piece of the problem. You could bundle multiple pieces together into a complete solution.

The gap you identify becomes your differentiation — the reason buyers choose you over the alternatives.

Step 4: Research Their Traffic and Marketing

Understanding how competitors get traffic helps you decide where to focus your own marketing.

Check their website/blog: Are they publishing content? What are they writing about? This tells you whether SEO is working in this space and what keywords are worth targeting.

Check their social media: Where are they most active? How engaged is their audience? This tells you where your audience hangs out.

Search for their brand in relevant communities: Are buyers mentioning them in Reddit posts? Are they recommended in Facebook groups? This tells you how strong their word-of-mouth is.

Check Facebook Ads Library: Are they running paid ads? If so, what's their messaging? The ads they're running (and keeping running, which means they're working) tell you what messaging resonates with buyers.

Step 5: Define Your "Win" Against Each Competitor

After all this research, you should be able to finish this sentence for each major competitor:

"For buyers who are considering [Competitor X], my product is the better choice because ___."

Some possible fills:

• "...it's specifically designed for [specific audience they don't serve]"
• "...it includes [specific component they're missing]"
• "...it's [significantly cheaper/significantly more comprehensive] for what you get"
• "...the design and usability is significantly better"
• "...it comes with [support/bonuses/community] that they don't offer"

If you can't complete that sentence clearly and honestly, you might need to rethink your differentiation. Launching a product that's essentially the same as existing products at the same price point is an uphill battle.

Once you've found your differentiation angle, check out my post on how to validate your niche to confirm the broader market is real before you build.

The Tools I Use

You don't need expensive research tools. I do 90% of competitive research with:

• Google (incognito mode for unbiased results)
• Etsy search and bestseller filters
• Gumroad discovery
• Facebook Ads Library (free)
• Google Keyword Planner (free with Google Ads account)
• Reddit (search any topic in the search bar)

After completing competitive research, I build my products on MadeThis — clean product pages I can SEO-optimize to compete directly in search results against the competitors I've identified.

The Honest Mindset

Competition is proof that the market exists. Every competitor you find is validation that people spend money in this space.

Your job isn't to avoid competition — it's to compete intelligently. Find the gap, own it, and serve that specific audience better than anyone else.

The creators who succeed aren't the ones who found untouched markets. They're the ones who found markets with existing buyers and found a way to serve those buyers better.

I build and host all my digital products on MadeThis — after doing competitive research, it's the fastest platform to get a differentiated product live.