The product is almost never the bottleneck. By the time someone asks how to launch, the template usually exists — it is sitting in a folder, mostly finished, waiting for a version of itself that feels ready. What is actually missing is a set of small decisions nobody has scheduled: what it is called, who it is for, what it costs, and where the link goes.
This is that week, written as a schedule. One sitting a day, an hour or two at most. It assumes you already have something built and does not assume you have an audience.
Day 1 — Name the problem, not the product
Write one sentence that names the specific situation your buyer is in, in their words, before they know your product exists. Not "a Notion finance template" — "I have no idea whether last month was actually profitable."
That sentence becomes the hardest-working copy you will write all week. It goes at the top of the product page, in the first line of every post about it, and in the subject line of the email that announces it. If you cannot write it yet, the product is not unfinished — the audience is undecided.
If the sentence is true for everyone, it is compelling to no one. Narrow it until it is uncomfortably specific, then go one step further.
Day 2 — Decide the price and stop reopening it
Pick a number today and treat it as settled for the launch. You are not looking for the optimal price, you are looking for a defensible one, because an unpriced product cannot be sold at all.
Three anchors, in order of usefulness:
- The buyer's alternative. What do they do instead if you do not exist — a subscription, a freelancer, four hours of their own time? Price visibly under that.
- Comparable, well-made products. Not the cheapest listing you can find. The ones that match yours in scope and finish.
- What you would pay. A gut check, last, and only as a veto on something absurd.
Write the number down somewhere you will see it on launch day. The urge to discount arrives around Day 6, and it arrives disguised as strategy. If the number is the part that genuinely will not settle, The Pricing Guide walks the same three anchors in more detail than a day allows.
Day 3 — Write the page, in the buyer's order
A product page is not a description, it is a sequence of answers. Write them in the order a stranger actually asks:
- What is this, in one line? The Day 1 sentence, pointed at your product.
- What exactly do I get? File types, page counts, how many templates. Concrete nouns.
- Is it for me? Two or three "this is for you if" lines — and at least one honest "this is not for you if."
- How do I use it? The first three steps after download. This is the section that prevents refunds.
- What if it does not work for me? Your refund policy, stated plainly rather than buried.
Everything else — origin story, philosophy, a manifesto about productivity — is optional and goes below the buy button, if anywhere. If answering "what exactly do I get" is where the day stalls, that is a packaging problem rather than a copy problem, and The Offer Guide is built for it.
Day 4 — Build the delivery, then buy it yourself
Set up checkout and delivery, then run one real purchase end to end with your own card. Not a test-mode transaction: a real one, which you refund afterwards.
You are checking four things, and one of them always breaks: the payment goes through, the download link arrives, the file opens on a device you did not build it on, and the receipt does not look like spam. Fixing any of these after your first customer finds them costs far more than the hour it takes now.
Day 5 — Write the announcement before you need it
Launch-day writing is bad writing, because launch day is anxious. Write it today, while nothing is happening.
You need three pieces, and they are shorter than you think: an email or post that says what it is, who it is for and what it costs; a follow-up for three days later that answers the one question you expect most; and a single line you can paste into a reply when someone asks what you have been working on.
If you have no list, write them anyway. They become the first entry in a habit, and the post you send to eleven people is the same post you send to a thousand later.
Day 6 — Line up the first ten people
Ten specific humans, by name, who have the problem from Day 1. Not a strategy, a list.
Message them individually before the public launch — not to sell, but to hand over a copy and ask what is confusing. Two things come out of this that no amount of marketing produces: the first few sentences of real feedback, and the first few people who will say something out loud when it goes live.
This is also the most commonly skipped day, because it is the only one that feels like asking for something. The Creator Starter Kit is free and includes the message templates for it, if starting from a blank reply is the friction.
Day 7 — Ship it, then measure one number
Publish the page, send the announcement, and post the thing. Then close the tab.
For the first two weeks, track exactly one number: how many people visited the page versus how many bought. That single ratio tells you which problem you actually have. Almost nobody visited, so it is a distribution problem — keep writing and keep pointing at the page. Plenty visited and nobody bought, so it is a page problem — the promise, the price or the proof is not landing, and a bigger audience would not fix it.
Everything else you could measure this week is a distraction from that fork in the road.
What to ignore until after the first sale
A bundle. A second product. An affiliate program. A redesign. A course. A logo. These are all real things worth doing eventually, and every one of them is a comfortable way to avoid the week above.
The first launch is not supposed to be big. It is supposed to be finished — because everything you learn about pricing, positioning and packaging afterwards comes from having shipped a thing that someone paid for, and none of it comes from planning the launch again.
If you would rather run this week against a checklist than a blog post, The Launch Planner is the same seven days as a working document, with the assets and dates laid out day by day.
