You asked what this is and why there's money in it. Here's the whole thing in plain English — with pictures — so you can decide if it's worth us building one.
Notion is a free app — on the web and on your phone — that people use to organise their life and work in one place.
Think of all the little things people juggle: notes, to-do lists, a budget, plans, trackers. Normally that's five different apps. Notion is one app that does all of it, on pages you build yourself. It's a bit like a mix of Word + Excel + a to-do app + a little personal website, all stitched together.
It's genuinely popular — students, freelancers, small businesses and "organise my life" people love it. And most of them are not techy. They just want it to look nice and work.
A template is a ready-made Notion page setup that someone can copy into their own Notion with one click. Instead of building a budget system from scratch (which takes hours and know-how), they buy yours and press Duplicate — and it's instantly theirs to use.
It's the same idea as our spreadsheets — a pre-built tool people happily pay to skip the setup — just in a nicer, app-like wrapper.
Same reason people buy our tax and budget spreadsheets: it saves them hours and they don't know how to build it well themselves. A polished Notion budget or business system can take an experienced person an afternoon to set up. People will pay £7–20 to get it in one click instead.
| A spreadsheet | A grid of cells. Powerful for numbers, but looks like… a spreadsheet. |
| A Notion template | More like a mini-app. The same list of data can be shown as a neat table, a calendar, or little cards — and it looks polished on a phone. |
| Feels like | Excel / Google Sheets |
| Notion feels like | A tidy app you'd actually enjoy opening |
| We deliver it by | A "Make a copy" link (we already do this with Google Sheets) |
| Notion delivers by | A "Duplicate" link — even simpler |
Good news: the thinking is identical to what we already do. We design the categories, the sums, the layout. We're just putting it in a different container.
| What | Category | £ |
|---|---|---|
| 🛒 Tesco | Groceries | 42.10 |
| ⛽ Shell | Transport | 61.00 |
| 🍽️ Nando's | Eating out | 28.40 |
The stat boxes and the goal bar fill in automatically from the list underneath — that's the "automation" part.
The same jobs shown as drag-around cards (a "board") — the layout people love and can't easily build themselves.
Ticking things off on your phone feels good — that "feel-good" factor is a big reason these sell.
I looked up real numbers. Notion templates are one of Etsy's best-selling digital categories. Here's the honest picture, no hype:
This is the bit I find genuinely exciting for you:
So you know exactly what you'd be agreeing to — it's very close to our current routine:
Build the whole template — the databases, the sums, the dashboard, the layout, the little instructions inside. Same as I build the spreadsheets.
Make a free Notion account to hold the master and get the "Duplicate" link — exactly like the Google account we use for the Sheets links today. Then approve the Etsy listing.
After that it's the same Etsy flow we already run: a listing with copy + preview pictures, and the download is a little file containing the Duplicate link. I can build a first pilot — probably a Notion Budget or a Small-Business hub — for you to look at and judge before we commit to listing it.
Worth a single pilot — yes. The demand is proven, the price is higher than our spreadsheets, it reaches a brand-new audience, and we already own the hard part (the money know-how). The risk is small: one build, and if it doesn't sell we've lost a little time, not money.
How I'd play it: finish the four low-competition spreadsheet quick-wins first (they're faster and closer to what's already selling), then build one Notion template as the new-format test. If it sells, we make a few more. If it doesn't, we've learned cheaply.
That's the whole idea. If it still appeals in the morning, just say "build a Notion pilot" and tell me which — Budget or Business hub — and I'll make one for you to look at. 👍