Discover Automation Business Ideas for Small Businesses with This Free n8n Workflow!

Finding profitable business ideas in the automation space is tough. You’re scrolling through Reddit, hoping to spot small business problems that you can solve, but it’s a slow, manual process that often leads to dead ends. What if you could automate the discovery of automation-related challenges and generate actionable business ideas in minutes?

Detailed Features

• Trigger and Reddit Scraping
  • Trigger: Initiates the workflow manually, allowing you to test the process on demand.
  • Reddit Scraping : Scrapes 50 posts from the r/smallbusiness subreddit containing the keyword “automation,” capturing details like upvotes, post content, subreddit size, creation date, and URL.

    

    
    
• Initial Filtering and Field Editing
  • Initial Filtering : Filters posts to ensure relevance: at least 5 upvotes, non-empty content, and posted within the last 180 days. This ensures you’re working with recent, engaging posts.

    

    
    
  • Field Editing : Standardizes the data by mapping fields like upvotes, subreddit size, original post content, subreddit name, date, and URL, preparing it for AI analysis.

    

    
    
• AI Analysis for Business Relevance
  • AI Analysis : Uses an AI agent to determine if the post describes a business problem or need for a solution (outputs “yes” or “no”). Focuses on posts mentioning specific challenges or requirements businesses are trying to address.

    

    

    
    
  • Filtering for Business Relevance: Only passes posts where the AI agent outputs “yes,” ensuring the post is relevant to business problems or needs.

    

    
    
• Summarization and Business Idea Generation
  • Summarization: Uses DeepSeek to summarize the Reddit post, capturing its core problem or need in a concise format.
    

    

  • Business Idea Generation: Generates a potential business idea or service to address the identified problem. Outputs a concise description of a solution that could help multiple businesses with similar challenges.
    

    

• Merging and Storage
  • Merging Outputs: Combines the original post data, summary, and generated business idea into a single dataset, ensuring all insights are consolidated.
  • Google Sheets Storage : Stores the results in a Google Sheet with columns for upvotes, subreddit, post date, subreddit size, post URL, original post, summary, and potential solution, creating a structured hub for your business ideas.

    

Key Benefits

• Save Hours on Research: Automate the discovery of automation-related problems in r/smallbusiness, eliminating manual scrolling.
• Data-Driven Business Ideas: Use AI to identify real business challenges and generate actionable solutions tailored to small businesses.
• Structured Insights: Store all data in a Google Sheet for easy access and planning your next venture.
• Stay Ahead of Trends: Focus on recent, relevant posts (within 180 days) to capitalize on current automation needs.
• Free Tool with Big Value: Get a taste of n8n automation for free, and see how it can transform your workflow.

Target Audience

• Entrepreneurs: Individuals looking for automation-related business ideas to start or expand their ventures.
• Small Business Owners: Owners seeking solutions to automation challenges in their operations.
• Freelancers: Consultants or developers wanting to offer automation services to small businesses.
• Innovators: Anyone interested in identifying and solving business problems with automation.

What’s Included

• n8n Workflow JSON File: Ready-to-import Reddit Business Ideas Generator workflow.
• Sample Output File: Example Google Sheets export with business ideas and summaries.
• Bonus Google Sheets Template: Pre-formatted spreadsheet for storing your business ideas.

Requirements

• n8n Instance: Self-hosted (free) or n8n Cloud account.
• Reddit API Key: Client ID and secret from Reddit (free, setup guide included).
• Ollama and DeepSeek API Keys: For AI analysis and idea generation (affordable plans, setup guide included).
• Google Sheets Access: Free Google account for storing results.
• Basic n8n Knowledge: Familiarity with importing workflows (guide covers the rest).