I spent 6 weeks creating a product nobody wanted.

Not “slow sales.” Not “needs tweaking.”

I mean nobody bought it.

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

And the worst part? It was 100% preventable.

Let me tell you what happened.

March 2019. I was scrolling Pinterest, again, and saw this pin with 47,000 saves:

“Instagram Content Calendar Template.”

My brain did what every creator’s brain does when they see big numbers:

“People clearly want this. I should make one too.”

So I spent the next six weeks building what I thought would be my first big win:

An “Ultimate Instagram Content Planner & Strategy Bundle.”

I made it in 5 different color schemes. Wrote 50+ caption examples. Tested every hashtag myself.

I designed it. Made it beautiful. Spent hours perfecting every detail.

Listed it on Etsy for $27.

Then… crickets.

Week 1: 0 sales. Week 2: 0 sales. Week 3: 0 sales (dropped the price to $19). Week 4: Still 0 sales.

By week 6, I was exhausted. Frustrated. And questioning everything.

Then a friend asked me one simple question:

Silence.

Because the answer was no.

I saw a popular pin. I assumed demand. I built it.

And I learned the most expensive lesson of my early digital product journey:

Popularity doesn’t equal demand for YOUR version.

Here’s what that mistake actually cost me:

• 90 hours of work (6 weeks × 3 hours/day)
• $6,750 in lost opportunity (I could’ve done client work at $75/hour)
• 3 months of paralyzed confidence (I was too scared to create anything new)

But here’s the thing:

This wasn’t even my first validation failure.

In 2014, I created a “perfect” rebrand for a local café. Beautiful logo. Vintage aesthetic. Hand-drawn everything.

They loved it. I loved it.

Two months later, they closed.

The owner told me: “People loved our new look. But it didn’t really change anything.”

Ouch.

That’s when I realized:

Beautiful doesn’t equal profitable.

Good design doesn’t fix a problem if you’re designing the wrong solution.

So what should I have done instead?

I’ve spent the last 5 years figuring that out.

And I finally created a validation framework that actually works.

It’s helped me:

✅ Avoid creating 12+ products that would’ve flopped

✅ Launch 8 products that actually made money

✅ Pre-sell a $147 course to 24 people BEFORE I even built it (made $3,528 in 3 days)

✅ Create passive income products that still sell today

I break down the entire framework on the blog, including:

• The 3-question validation test I use before creating anything
• How to pre-sell products before you build them (this is genius)
• Search volume validation (takes 10 minutes, saves weeks)
• The real human test (scary but essential)
• Exactly which products I almost created but validated out of (saved me months)

Plus, I’m sharing the free Product Idea Validation Worksheet I use for every single product now.

→ Read the full story ​

Get the framework here: Product Idea Validation Worksheet​​​

Look, I’ve made enough expensive mistakes for both of us.

You don’t have to waste 6 weeks (and $5,000) like I did.

Validate first. Build second.

Your future self will thank you.

Talk soon,

Talk soon,
Marilyn