How to write a sales page for a digital product

What does a sales page actually have to do?

Most first sales pages are written as an argument. The writer imagines a sceptic and sets out to win. That is the wrong model: a visitor who clicked through to your page is already interested. They are not arguing with you, they are working through a checklist, and they will leave the moment the checklist stalls.

So the page is a sequence, and the order is not negotiable, because each block only makes sense once the one above it has landed. Price before value is an insult. Proof before a promise is noise.

The nine blocks, in order

How do you write the headline?

The headline is read by roughly everyone and the rest of the page by roughly a fifth of them, which makes it the only line worth writing ten versions of. Three that work and one that does not:

• “Sell digital products without ever showing your face.” Outcome, plus the dread removed.
• “A month of client emails, written in an afternoon.” Outcome, with the time cost made concrete.
• “47 Notion templates for freelancers who hate admin.” Specific quantity, specific person.
• “The Ultimate Business Growth System.” Says nothing. Could be sold by anyone, to anyone, which means it is sold to nobody.

The test: could a competitor put their name on your headline and have it still be true? If yes, rewrite it. Specificity is the only defensible thing on a page anyone can copy in ten minutes.

How do you write the problem section without being manipulative?

Concretely: two or three sentences of the actual situation, then one sentence naming what it costs. No “are you TIRED of”, no italicised imaginary dialogue, no invented crisis.

“You rebuild the same client spreadsheet every January. It works until you add a second income stream, and then you spend a Sunday fixing formulas instead of taking on work.” That is the whole section. A reader who does that recognises themselves in one line, and a reader who does not has usefully learned the product is not for them.

What goes in “what is inside”?

For each item, add a clause saying what it is for. A list of names is inventory; a list of names with purposes is a plan the buyer can already picture using.

• Count everything countable. Files, pages, templates, lessons, minutes of video, categories.
• Name the format. People want to know it opens in something they own.
• Say what each part is for. “The pricing calculator, so you stop quoting from memory.”
• Put the best item first, not the one you made first.

How do you prove it without showing your face?

Ranked by how much work each is to get, against how much it is worth:

The mechanics of building an audience that will supply this proof are covered in building an email list without showing your face. The first fifty buyers are the ones who make every page after this one easier to write.

How should the price be presented?

The three anchors that hold up, in order of how easy they are to use honestly: what the components would cost separately, what the alternative costs (a tool subscription, a VA, an agency), and what doing nothing costs in hours. Pricing a digital product goes into how to pick the number itself; the page’s job is only to make the number look like arithmetic rather than a leap.

Then the guarantee, immediately below, in two sentences. “30 days. If it is not useful, reply to your receipt and I will refund you, no questions.” Nothing more elaborate. A long guarantee section reads as a long list of conditions.

What kills a page?

1. Two offers. A page with a choice on it converts worse than either option alone. Put the second product on its own page.
2. A menu at the top. Every link out of a sales page is an exit. Strip the navigation down to a logo.
3. Adjectives instead of nouns. “Powerful, comprehensive, game-changing” are what a page says when it cannot say what is inside.
4. A countdown that resets. One returning visitor discovers it and you have taught them exactly how much to trust the rest.
5. A wall of text. Short paragraphs, subheads, and a bold sentence every few blocks. Nobody reads a page; they scan it and then read the parts that survived the scan.
6. No price. “DM for details” loses the buyer who was ready and keeps the one who wants to negotiate.

Does the page need to be long?

The practical rule: write all nine blocks, then delete every sentence that is not answering one of the six questions. What is left is the right length by construction, and it is almost always shorter than the first draft.

Where the page lives matters less than people expect. Gumroad’s own product page will carry all nine blocks perfectly well, which is one reason it is a sensible first home: the platform comparison covers when it stops being the right answer.