Ask me what I could build a product about, and I’ll hand you a list. I can build and fix WordPress sites. I can set up email signups, forms, and tracking. I can make templates and printables, and I spent years teaching tech to beginners as an IT instructor. When someone recently asked which of those I could teach step by step, I picked all four. When they asked who I wanted to help, I picked three different groups. It felt like being well rounded at the time, but it was really the clearest sign that I hadn’t decided anything at all.
What I Tried
The plan was simple. DigiManos has a free quiz on the site called the Digital Product Fit Finder, and I was going to take it myself and let it point me toward a product. Before I trusted it with my own decision, though, I took a hard look at it. It still steered some people toward coaching, which I’m not offering. Its scoring quietly favored some paths over others, and its results sounded like an expert talking down to the reader. So instead of patching it, I rebuilt it from scratch with AI helping me, and I want to be clear that it was a real partnership, not me alone at a keyboard.
The new version asks 21 questions instead of 15, because I wanted people to get a deeper look at themselves. I also noticed that some questions let people off the hook by answering “both,” so every question now forces a real choice. It measures six traits, like whether you’d rather teach or make, build something once or keep it running, and be out front or work behind the scenes. Then it matches you to one of nine product paths. Once it was finished, I took it three times.
What Happened
My first result was Educational Products at 11.5 points, with Memberships and Licensing tied at 10.5. The quiz called that a loose fit, which means no single path clearly won. Honestly, the scoring confused me at first, and I wasn’t sure if I was reading it wrong or the quiz was. It turned out to be a little of both. I counted one answer under the wrong trait, because two labels on the score sheet looked too much alike. That mistake turned out to be useful, since it exposed a flaw that would have tripped up other people too, so the labels got renamed and the score sheet got a check line.
On my second take, online, I realized I’d misread question 14. My scores held, but I spotted another problem: when two paths tied, the site showed them as if one ranked above the other. That got fixed too. On my third take, Educational Products came in at 12.5, Memberships at 11.5, and Licensing at 9.5. One of my answers kept moving between takes, but my top path never changed.
Two more things happened along the way, and neither one had anything to do with my score. The first was my own mistake. When I set up the signup that sends people a free download, I got the download link wrong, so it didn’t work. Anyone who signed up would have been promised something and handed a link that led nowhere. It’s the kind of small error that’s easy to miss when you’re the only one checking your work. It’s also the kind that tells a brand-new subscriber whether you follow through.
The second was a setting in the email tool I use. It was showing five other creators’ newsletters to every new person who signed up for mine. I had just promised new subscribers no spam, and the first thing they saw was a pile of strangers asking for their email. That’s forced advertising, so I turned it off. It was a small setting, but it was my promise on the line.
What I Learned
When the quiz called my results a loose fit, my first thought was that something was wrong with me. I figured I was too scattered to know what I wanted to build. When I looked closer, though, my results told a different story. My two strongest leans, teaching over making and owning my own products over running a platform, never moved across all three takes. What bounced around were the small leans. That was the clearest moment of the whole process, realizing I actually had a standing, a place I stood that didn’t move. I wasn’t starting from nowhere, I just hadn’t asked myself the right questions before.
I also pushed back on how the results described me, and I’m glad I did. People like me, who build our own sites and our own things, are creators too. My motto has always been “build it, not buy it, and sell it if you can,” and that’s exactly the kind of person I want to help. The biggest lesson was simpler than any score, though. Building the tool wasn’t enough, and I had to take it myself, make mistakes on it, and feel where it was wrong. By the third take, I felt something I hadn’t felt about this decision before: confident that I finally had a tool that could gauge where I stood.
What I’m Trying Next
When it came time to name an actual product, my old habit showed up right on schedule. I picked every audience and every skill again, and I had to talk myself back down to one. So here’s the one. I’m going to build a step-by-step eBook that walks a solo builder, with no team and not much money, through setting up their first signup system on their own website. That covers the signup form, the free download, the confirmation email, and a simple way to count who signed up. By the end, their signup works.
Why that one? I didn’t pick it from a list. I had just lived it, building the signup behind my own Fit Finder, mistakes and all. It fits my steadiest leans, since it’s teaching, it’s built once, and it’s my own product. It’s also small enough to actually finish, which matters more than I’d like to admit for someone who just checked every box on the list.
Once I’d picked it, I checked it against a list of 20 digital products that sell from Liquid Web, which gives pros and cons for each. My idea fits two of them, eBooks and guides, and the downsides hit harder than the upsides. The one that stuck with me was free competition, because WordPress and email tools both have free help pages, so why would anyone pay for my guide? When I set up my own signup, those pages covered each tool on its own, and the hard part was getting them to work together. That’s my best guess at what’s worth paying for, and it’s only a guess. The list also promised passive income, and with zero sales, I have no idea if that’s true for me.
Here’s the part I’m holding myself to. I’m not writing the eBook yet. I don’t know whether a signup system is a real problem for anyone besides me, and a guide nobody needs is still a guide nobody needs, no matter how well it’s written. Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to ask real people about their own experience setting up a signup, and I don’t have a big audience to ask. How I test an idea from near zero is the next lesson, whatever the answers turn out to be.
So what about you? If you’ve got a list of things you could build, which one do you keep circling back to, and what’s stopping you from picking it?
R.L. Canty │ DigiManos, Inc.
