In our last practical AI builder program, we were deep in research mode. The topic is: how to make money with AI.

Near the end, asked: “do you have an example of turning this into a paid product?”

I didn’t have anything packaged up yet. But the question stuck.

My instinct: selling with AI is no different from selling without it. Except I had no evidence.

So I took the three AI mentors I built that session, Dan Koe, Justin Welsh, and Alex Hormozi. Put up the simplest landing page I’ve ever made. Added a price.

Someone bought it the same day.

Screenshot of my stripe panel receiving $35 payments (that’s the product)

That’s the first step: validate fast, prove the idea, make the first sale.

But one sale doesn’t tell you everything on how to make money with AI. The real work is what comes after.

The iteration. The testing. The parts you can’t hand off to a model.

That’s what has actually done.

This is his second time writing here. Last time, he broke down the Creator Character System behind a 14M+ view content strategy.

He runs Write Your Way To Wealth, where he’s building a $2K/month Substack while holding down a 9–5.

[Write Your Way To Wealth

The exact system I use to build a $2K/mo Substack while working a 9–5. Get clear, practical strategies to grow to 1,000 subscribers, monetize your audience, and build a newsletter that compounds into real income.

By Timo Mason🤠

](https://timomason.substack.com?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=publication_embed&utm_medium=web)

If you’re trying to turn a Substack into a real revenue stream, this one is worth your time.

Timo, take it over.

Howdy, Wealth Gang🤠

“I need more traffic to successfully sell digital products”

That’s what most creators on Substack think, so they keep on writing more articles, and Notes.

Meanwhile, their sales page is sitting there with a 1% conversion rate, quietly leaking sales every single day.

---

Well… that was me in February.😅

I launched Substack HQ (my Substack content management system inside Notion) promoted it to my list, and waited.

163 people looked at the landing page.

2 bought.

161 people looked at my offer and said “nah, im good.”

I had a conversion problem not a traffic one, so when I recognized this I started an experiment…

Every month I changed one thing, tracked the numbers, and let the data tell me what was broken.

Over time, my CR actually improved…

February: 1% conversion rate.

March: 2%. conversion rate.

May: 8%. conversion rate.

In this article you’ll learn:

✓ Why a low conversion rate is a product problem, not a traffic problem

✓ The exact 3 fixes I tested to go from 1% to 8% conversion rate

✓ The 5 Digital Product Lessons This Experiment Taught Me

In this article I’m walking you through every change I made, why I made it, and what you can steal to generate more sales with your own digital products.

Let’s goo! 🤠

The Numbers Don’t Lie (And Mine Were Ugly)

For every 100 people who saw the Substack HQ landing page, 99 walked away.

A healthy conversion rate for a digital product is anything above 5%.

I was at 1%.

The gut reaction is to blame traffic. “Maybe the wrong people are clicking.”

But these clicks came from my own email list, so these were warm leads and they still didn’t buy.

That told me the problem was somewhere on the landing page, in the mails, or the product itself.

So instead of just writing more content and hoping the numbers fixed themselves, I treated the Substack HQ like an ongoing experiment.

My goal was to find the answer to “Why the hell is my conversion rate only 1%?!”

So each month I picked one thing that could be the reason, fixed it, and checked the numbers 30 days later to see if my 1% conversion rate went up.

Here’s my whole process to 8x my conversion rate, and how you can copy it for your digital products...

Fix Attempt 1: Add Urgency and Collect Feedback

The first thing I looked at was the offer itself.

The price was $29, with no real deadline or urgency.

That means no reason to buy today instead of tomorrow and “tomorrow” for most people means never, so I made two changes.

Change 1: I raised the official price to $49, but added a 50% discount code inside my email automation.

Anyone clicking through from my emails would see the general price is $49, but they’d get it for $25 as a limited-time subscriber perk.

This creates real urgency, makes them feel like they’re getting a deal, and gives them a reason to act now instead of closing the tab.

Change 2: I added an automation that asked every person who clicked the sales page why they didn’t buy.

If people aren’t converting, the least you can do is ask them why.

Maybe the product wasn’t what they expected or maybe the page was confusing.

You won’t always get responses, but the ones you do get are gold.

Here’s what you can apply right now:

If you have a digital product with no urgency on the page, add some.

A limited-time discount inside your email automation or a limited quantity discount inside Gumroad is the easiest way to do it.

Also set up a simple one-question follow-up for people who don’t buy “What stopped you from grabbing this today?” even a handful of replies will tell you more than any analytics dashboard.

Did it work for me?

Sort of.

March 1st to 25th I had 52 cart views with 1 order, which is a 2% conversion rate.

Better than 1%, but still nowhere near good enough.

The urgency tweak moved the needle slightly, but something bigger was still broken.

Fix Attempt 2: Kill the Video

Urgency helped a little, but 2% is still ugly.

So I looked at the page itself.

I had a promo video sitting at the top of the sales page. The idea was that video builds trust, explains the product better than text, and warms people up before they hit the buy button.

Good theory, but data doesn’t care about theory.

I started wondering if the video was actually hurting me, because it got perceived as low quality, or my audience was just into reading, not watching, or it slowed the page down and people were bouncing before it even loaded.

So I replaced the promo video with a clean product thumbnail.

Here’s what you can apply right now:

If your video feels low effort or off-brand, cut it. A clean product thumbnail with a clear headline will outperform a weak video every time. Only keep the video if it’s genuinely good and adds something the rest of the page can’t.

If you’re not sure, test both versions and run the page without the video for a month and compare your numbers.

Did it work for me?

Nope, the conversion rate stayed flat, which actually told me the video wasn’t the problem.

So I had one thing left to test, and this was honestly my last chance to make this experiment work.

The pricing.

If this didn’t push my conversion rate past 5%, I was done. I would stop the experiment and accept that there was no product-market fit.

Fix Attempt 3: Attack the Price Point

This was my last shot.

Maybe $49 was just too much to ask, So I made 2 changes at once.

Change 1: I dropped the official price to $25.

While keeping the 50% discount code inside my email automation, so anyone clicking through from my emails could grab it for $12.50.

Change 2: I removed the bonus that came with Substack HQ

I wanted to save it to launch as a separate product later, but also make the price drop justifiable.

Here’s what you can apply right now:

If you’ve already tested urgency and page elements and nothing moved, go after the price and drop it further than feels comfortable.

The goal isn’t to maximize revenue but to find the price point where your audience actually converts and once you know that number, you can build a money-making funnel around it. :D

Did it work?

May had 53 cart views with 4 orders which is a 8% conversion rate.

Finally past the 5% mark.

Turns out $49 wasn’t the move, but $12.50 for my audience was a 🎯bullseye🎯!

The 5 Digital Product Lessons This Experiment Taught Me

Three months, Three fixes, and a lot of internal doubt in the process😅.

Here’s what I took from the whole thing.

1\. Traffic is not your problem until conversion is solved

Most creators pour energy into growing their audience while their sales page sits at 1% conversion. That’s like filling a bucket with a hole in it.

Fix the hole first and then fill the bucket.

2\. Test one variable at a time

I changed urgency first, then the page element, then the price.

If I had changed everything at once, I’d have no idea what actually moved the needle.

One change per month, then wait for 30 days to take a peek at the numbers.

It’s slow, but the only way to know with relative certainty what you need to get a good conversion rate.

3\. Price is often the last thing creators want to touch

It feels like admitting defeat. Like your product isn’t worth what you thought, but…

Price is just a variable like any other

Sometimes, your audience is not as willing to spend money as th you expected, and that’s okay. Meet them where they are, get them through the door and show them through their first small purchase how much value you can provide.

4\. A cheap front-end product is an introduction, not a money-maker

My goal was never to get rich off $12.50 sales.

My low-ticket solutions intend to turn readers into customers so they get introduced to my product/service ecosystem.

The money is in the upsell and funnel that comes after that first purchase.

5\. It takes time and a system to track it

This experiment ran from February to May.

That’s four months of checking numbers, making changes, and resisting the urge to panic or give up too early.

Most people would have killed the product after month one.

The only reason I didn’t was because I had a structure. I knew exactly when to check the numbers (every 30 days), what I was testing, and what the result meant.

And it’s the exact same with content…

Creating consistently on Substack isn’t just about writing but also tracking what’s working, knowing when to post and managing your ideas.

That’s exactly what Substack HQ is built for.

It’s the Notion system I use to run my entire Substack:

✓ Goal Center
✓ Writing room
✓ Content calendar
✓ Inspiration library

So feel free to see what the talk of this whole article is all about. ;)

And if you want to build the foundation of a $2K/month Substack business on top of that system, the Substack Side-Hustle Sprint is the next step, a free 5-day masterclass I built to take you from zero to having a real newsletter business in place.

Subscribe to Write Your Way To Wealth and get the Substack Side-Hustle Sprint for free.

See ya soon

Timo Mason🤠

P.S. Big thanks to Jenny Ouyang for the idea of this article! :D

I just had this as internal documentation, and she gave me the idea to turn it into an article. :)

P.P.S Dominic Kristianto was my sparring partner (or rather my therapist, in case of me telling him all my conversion problems😅) when it came to ideating potential fixes for the landing page, so big thanks to him too! :)

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