How I Wrote a Sales Page That Generated $180K in 10 Days

In November 2025, I wrote a sales page for a client's online course launch. The course was priced at $997. The launch window was 10 days. The result: $183,000 in revenue from a list of 8,200 subscribers. This isn't a story about luck or a massive audience. It's a story about research, structure, and copy decisions that compounded into a result neither of us expected. Here's exactly how it happened.

The client — a business coach with a mid-sized audience — had launched the same course twice before. The first launch did $28K. The second did $41K. Good, but plateauing. The product was strong. The audience was engaged. But the sales page was doing the heavy lifting with features and logistics instead of desire and transformation. It read like a course catalog, not a persuasion piece.

Before writing a single word, I spent 8 hours on research: • Interviewed 6 past students about their experience and what made them buy • Read 40+ testimonials and highlighted the exact language students used • Analyzed the top 3 competitor sales pages in the same niche • Reviewed the client's email replies and DMs for objection patterns • Mapped the emotional journey from 'considering' to 'purchased' The research revealed something critical: past students didn't buy the course for the content. They bought it because they were tired of second-guessing every business decision. The transformation wasn't 'learn business strategy.' It was 'finally feel confident making decisions without a mentor on speed dial.' That insight changed everything about the page.

I used a modified PAS (Problem-Agitation-Solution) structure: 1. Open with the emotional truth — 'You know what you should be doing. You just don't trust yourself to do it yet.' 2. Agitate with specificity — Named the 4 exact scenarios where self-doubt shows up 3. Introduce the transformation — Not 'learn strategy' but 'become the kind of founder who decides fast and moves forward' 4. Social proof cascade — 8 testimonials placed strategically, each addressing a different objection 5. Module breakdown — Framed as outcomes, not content ('Week 3: You'll have a pricing model you never second-guess again') 6. Objection handling — FAQ section that addressed the real objections from research 7. Urgency and close — Enrollment deadline with genuine scarcity (cohort-based, limited to 50 seats)

Three specific decisions drove the result: **Decision 1: Lead with identity, not information.** The headline wasn't about the course. It was about who the reader would become. 'Stop Asking Permission to Run Your Own Business' outperformed 'The Complete Business Strategy Course' by 340% in the email subject line test. **Decision 2: Use student language, not expert language.** Every major claim on the page used the exact words from student interviews. 'I stopped spiraling over pricing decisions' is infinitely more powerful than 'Gain confidence in your pricing strategy.' **Decision 3: Place testimonials at objection points, not in a section.** Instead of a testimonial carousel at the bottom, I placed specific testimonials right after each section where a reader might hesitate. After the price reveal: a testimonial about ROI. After the time commitment section: a testimonial from a busy parent.

• 183 sales at $997 = $182,451 in revenue • 2.23% conversion rate from sales page visits (industry average: 1-2%) • 47% of sales came from the email sequence; 53% from direct sales page traffic • Cart abandonment recovery emails added another $14K • Refund rate: 2.7% (below the client's historical 5%) The client's previous best launch was $41K with the same list size and a similar price point. The difference wasn't the product, the audience, or the ad spend. It was the copy.