What should I put on my digital download delivery page?

Put something on it that she has to give you an email address to get, because the page at the end of your download link is the only part of the entire sale that Etsy does not own. Not the listing, not the checkout, not the message thread, and certainly not her email address. Just that one page, which you built yourself and have probably not looked at since the day you set it up.

I sold on Etsy for years. Quilts and bags out of cotton I imported from America, glitter hairbows before that when there was no money coming in and going back to work early was the alternative, feathers on eBay in my late teens if you go back far enough. I have sold a digital product too, priced at £2.50, and it sold 157 times, which is £392.50 and nobody is putting that on a billboard. So I know both sides of this, and the digital side is genuinely the easier one, which is what makes it so annoying that almost nobody has taken it.

Why is the delivery page the only part of the sale I own?

Because of how a digital order actually works. You upload a PDF to Etsy, and that PDF links out to wherever the templates really live, a Canva link or a Drive folder, because that is where the product genuinely is. Etsy hosts the PDF and only ever sees a link pointing outwards.

Which means your customer leaves Etsy on every single order.

That is not a workaround and it is not a loophole. It is just the ordinary way a digital order gets fulfilled, and it is how everybody is already doing it. Compare it to a parcel, where the card in the parcel is the handoff and that card has to be designed, printed, paid for and then actually remembered on a night when you are already behind with orders and the glue gun is still out. The digital version needs none of that. The door is already open and you did not have to build it.

So what is actually on most of those pages?

I went and looked, because I wanted to know rather than guess. I bought 14 digital products on Etsy and followed every one of them through to wherever the files were being kept.

Not one of the 14 had any way for me to hear from that seller again.

8 of them had nothing waiting there at all, just the file and a tab I closed. The other 6 said thank you with a discount code for my next Etsy order. And not one of those 14 sellers has been in touch with me since, because none of them has any way of doing it. I liked what they made enough to pay for it, and not one of them will ever know when I would have bought again.

I know that last part is true because it has already happened to me from the other direction. I bought the same template twice from the same Etsy seller and did not realise I had done it until a long time afterwards. She got two sales out of me without ever knowing there was a second one available to her.

Doesn't a discount code do the job?

This is the bit I got wrong myself for years in the physical business, where I put a discount code in every parcel that went out thinking I was encouraging people back. What I was actually doing was cutting what I earned from someone who had already bought, and pointing her back at Etsy to spend it.

There are really only four things that can be sitting on that page, and almost everyone is on one of the bottom three.

1. Nothing at all, so nothing is gained and nothing is lost, and the door just stands open. That was 8 of my 14.
2. A code sitting there for anyone who arrives, so your margin goes and you still have no idea who came through. That was the other 6.
3. A code in exchange for an email address, so you get the email, you still pay the margin every time it gets used, and you have quietly taught her that your work is worth less than the price on it.
4. First look at the next thing you make, in exchange for an email address, so you get the email, the margin stays where it was, and nothing about your work got cheaper.

The odd thing there is number 2 being worse than number 3, and I do not think anybody would guess that. The sellers who did the extra work of putting something on that page have ended up worse off than the ones who left it empty, because they pay out on every redemption and they still cannot reach a single one of those buyers.

So what should be waiting there instead?

The thing she actually wants costs you nothing, and that is the whole reason this works rather than being another job on the list.

Another size of the template. The colour version she cannot get on the listing. First look at the next one before it goes up anywhere else.

And the only way she gets any of it is by telling you where to send it.

If you are worried about bothering her, she liked what you make enough to pay for it, so she is not especially likely to mind hearing from you when you make the next one. That worry is the most common reason I hear for leaving the page empty, and I think it is the belief that costs makers the most money.

I will say what this costs, though, because an answer that costs nothing and promises everything is not a real answer. It costs you an evening to set up. You need somewhere for the email to land and something ready to send when it does, because collecting addresses and then going quiet on people for months on end is worse than never having asked. And it will not work at all if what you sell is a once-in-a-lifetime buy, because there is no next one for her to hear about, and if you sell one wedding thing to one bride then her telling somebody else is worth far more to you than her address is.

One more thing that matters and hardly anybody says it out loud. She has to genuinely choose to give you that address. You never take it off the order, Etsy is clear about that and they are right to be. The reason the "hear about it first" version is the safe one is that she is opting in to something she actually wants, on a page she chose to visit, having already paid you.

How do I start this week?

Go and look at your own page first, the same way I looked at those 14. Open your own listing, buy your own product if that is what it takes, follow the PDF through to the Canva link or the folder, and see what is genuinely sitting there waiting for her. Most people find nothing. Finding nothing is fine, because it means the door is already built and standing open and there is nothing to ask anyone for.

Then work out what you would offer somebody standing on it. Not money off. The next thing.

I closed 14 tabs, and not one of those makers can tell me when the next thing is ready